


Baker Street: Part XV

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [30]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural, The Lone Ranger - All Media Types
Genre: 20th Century, 221B Baker Street, Age Difference, Army, Banking, Berkshire, Boats and Ships, Bullying, Caring, Deception, Devonshire, Dogs, Edwardian Period, Electricity, England (Country), English Civil War, F/M, Family, Fan-fiction, Framing Story, Fraud, Friendship, Gay Sex, Happy Ending, Honour, Inheritance, Japan, Jealousy, Johnlock - Freeform, Justice, Kent - Freeform, LARPing, London, M/M, Male Prostitution, Minor Character Death, Multi, Murder, Native American Character(s), Northamptonshire, Plans, Poisoning, Police, Religion, Scotland, Surrey, Tea, Wales, Yorkshire, mining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 44,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1901-1902. And now, the end is near.... but there's still plenty of challenges waiting before the dynamic duo face their final curtain. Scheming samurai, vindictive old maids, bored housewives, cautious cobblers, gypsy lovers, Indian braves (twice over), electrifying exits, grieving godfathers, toxic tea, cavalier landowners and conniving servants plus, incredibly for John, yet another annoying Cornishman!
Relationships: John Reid | The Lone Ranger/Tonto, Lucifer/OMC, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ourinfinities](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourinfinities/gifts).



** 1901 **

**Interlude: A Proposal**  
by Master Tantalus Holmes  
_Tantalus gets a most unusual request for help_

**Case 314: 'Dai Hard' With A Vengeance ☼**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A well-endowed Welshman is having trouble living the quiet life_

**Case 315: Yorks And Lancaster ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_With his twin's help, Sherlock ties up some loose ends_

**Case 316: The Adventure Of The Riviera Robbery**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A case of theft in Wales ends up being much more serious_

**Case 317: The Adventure Of The Loan Arranger**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Another face from the pat rides in, complete with an Indian brave_

**Case 318: The Adventure Of The Sanguine Samurai**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Death in Berkshire – courtesy of distant Japan!_

**Case 319: The Adventure Of The Berwickshire Terrier**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Stephen Watson asks for Sherlock's help over a strange murder_

**Interlude: The Lyon's Den**  
by Mr. Daniel Hunter, Esquire  
_Danny Hunter is about to have to fight for his life_

**Case 320: The Adventure Of The Kentish Cobbler ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Someone else attempts to subvert democracy – enter Sherlock_

**Case 321: The Adventure Of Burghley House ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_A strange find threatens to rewrite the history books – or does it?_

**Case 322: The Return Of The Loan Arranger ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The Loan Arranger – or what Tonto has left of him – is back!_

**Interlude: Little Brother**  
by Mr. Laurence Trevelyan, Esquire  
_Somewhere there are little brothers who are NOT annoying_

**Case 323: Jack High ☼**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Randall Holmes meets his match, yet John is not happy – why?_

**Case 324: Electric Avenue ☼**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Modern technology is the death of a man – but it was no accident_

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** 1902 **

**Case 325: Tea For Two**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A man is seemingly being frightened to death, and there is tea_

**Case 326: The Adventure Of The Red Circle**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Miss St. Leger worries that murder is afoot – and she is right!_

**Interlude: Double Reason**  
by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire  
_Benji has two reasons to celebrate – as his lover finds out!_

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	2. Interlude: A Proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do – even if he's not yet quite a man.

_[Narration by Master Tantalus Holmes]_

It was nearly the end of my penultimate year at St. Peter's School when it happened. Carl – Khalid, to give him his proper name – came up to me as I was sorting through some library books and asked if he might have a word. Like him I did not make friends easily being something of an outsider because of my skin colour, so I had taken to this son of some Arabian potentate. He was a serious, almost intense fellow who would one day hold the power of life and death over the peoples of his small but, I knew, strategically important nation of Arbir.

“I shall not be coming back here next year, Tan”, he said, much to my shock. “I have to go home and sort matters out. You know.”

I sighed. I had feared as much; he had warned me that his father, as he so elegantly put it 'a complete fruitcake with excessive nuts', was set to be forced off his throne and that he himself would become the new sheikh before he was eighteen. And to think some were envious of royalty.

“There is something else that I wish to talk to you about before I go”, he said, looking unusually serious even for him. “You see, there is a lady back home whom I have long yearned to marry and to take as my wife.”

I looked at him uncertainly.

“Surely that would not be a problem for you as sheikh?” I asked. He shook his head.

“The traditions of my nation are strong”, he said, “and if I were to take but a single woman to my bed it would be looked upon as strange as if your prime minister in this country took a hundred to his own. People would not be supportive.”

“So you have a problem, then”, I said.

He looked at me and smiled – and that was when I began to feel ever so slightly uneasy.

Boy, was I right on that!

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	3. Case 314: 'Dai Hard' With A Vengeance ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. It is off to Wales for Sherlock and John as a friend of theirs who has moved to the area appears to be the victim of bigotry. But is all that it seems in rural Radnorshire?

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

One of my favourite parts of this Nation was the Anglo-Welsh border and the counties either side of it. So when Sherlock mentioned that we might be going to Radnorshire, I looked forward to the prospect.

“Do we have a case there?” I asked.

“Possibly”, he said. “Do you remember Dai Hard?”

I smiled at the memory. Mr. Dai Davies was a Welshman who had worked at Mr. Godfreyson's molly-houses, one of those small fellows whose, ahem, sizeable endowment looked even larger on his slender frame. Known around the house as 'Dai Hard' he was one of those to whom his bosses turned when they had a particularly pompous client who needed taking down a peg or two (i.e. to the point where they could barely walk, and might not survive the bumpy cab ride home). I had been a little saddened when the affable fellow had inherited a small house in his native Wales and had gone back there at the start of the year, although I had of course been pleased for him. It was still only July so what had befallen him in such a short time?

“He is remarkably uncommunicative as ever”, Sherlock smiled. “The address is in a town called Presteign. Do you know anything about it, John?”

“Only that it does have a station, as I remember reading about the line opening back when I went up to see you in Cambridge”, I said, glossing over the fact that that had been.... a number of years ago. “It is the county town, if I recall correctly, although only a small place as is the county it serves. Surely as he is a Welshman the people there cannot dislike him, especially someone as pleasant as he is?”

“Mr. Davies was certainly charming”, Sherlock smiled. “Although he was always a little embarrassed every time he saw me, because thanks to my terrible stepbrother, my inimitable mother had somehow learned of him and had used his nickname in not one but four† of her stories about a superhero whose catchphrase was 'yippie-ki-yay'! Worse, Campbell had also told her about Mr. Henry Percy and his 'cab-bed', hence her 'Dirty Harry' story.”

“Your Mother has that effect on most people”, I sighed. “She is still committing those crimes against literature, I see.”

He frowned at me for that perfectly correct observation, most likely because he could not gainsay what I had said. 

“Mother's works are certainly unique”, he said, glaring at me as I coughed for no particular reason, “but they certainly serve a purpose.”

“What?” I asked.

“Because”, he said, “one day Randall will awake to the horrible realization that for all his crimes, he not only has to translate the works of her and her fellow writers – _not_ her Coven, John! – but that Mother expects him to keep up to date with her prodigious output. He may think that having translated her works into four different languages he is done, but there is a whole new set waiting for him.”

“If the wind is in the right direction, perhaps we will hear the scream when he realizes?” I said hopefully.

He just shook his head at me, but smiled.

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All right, he did rather more than just shake his head and smile. And the damn journey to Presteign involved four trains with changes at Gloucester, Leominster and Titley Junction before our single-coach train juddered to a halt at Presteign Station and I let out another ye.... manly exclamation of surprise as my poor abused backside registered its manifest displeasure at my mouth's running away with itself. Again.

“You”, I grumbled as he may or may not have helped me to my feet, “are insatiable!”

“An interesting idea”, he smiled. “It will be four trains on the way back as well, so we shall have to see if you can 'sate' me then!”

And now I had to carry my bag in front of me because.... look, you know damn well why!

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Presteign was a charming little market town set in a small spur of Radnorshire that protruded into England on the eastern side of Offa's famous Dyke. We had alerted Mr. Davies to our arrival and he met us at the station, which I might have been grateful for had he not almost matched Sherlock in striving for an award in Irritating Smirking (First Class).

“Trains on this line are a little bumpy, are they not, doctor?” he smiled brightly.

I decided that I did not like him after all. And 'someone' could stop shaking their head at me like that!

“You said that you were having problems”, Sherlock said, “but did not go into detail. What, exactly?”

The young man blushed for some reason.

“I did not want to go into detail because nothing stays secret for long around here”, he said. “You will see soon enough when we reach the house, if not before.”

I wondered at that, but as we rode through the town I did indeed notice something odd. Several of the locals looked at us we passed them by and none of those looks were friendly. Sherlock obviously noted it too.

We reached Mr. Davies's farm which was right next to the River Lugg and the border with England, although still within sight of the town. A dark-haired fellow was waiting at the door as we drew up, looking something of a gypsy in appearance and I was not that surprised when he came up and very pointedly kissed Mr. Davies in front of us, his defiant look making it quite clear that he was stating his claim. Something that I, thankfully, never had to do.

“Gentlemen”, Sherlock said, smiling knowingly for some inexplicable reason, “May I suggest that we go inside out of this summer drizzle?”

Mr. Davies nodded and led the way in. His friend was clearly reluctant to let him go but some soft words persuaded him to make us some coffee, although he was clearly still wary of us.

“This is Ivo”, Mr. Davies smiled. “He is a gypsy who does odd jobs around the area... and certain other things. He is what they nowadays call a 'selective mute'; he can talk well enough but rarely does, or at least not outside these four walls.”

“I suppose that the people here do not like your relationship?” I asked.

To my surprise Sherlock shook his head at me.

“They do not, doctor”, he said, “but not for the reasons that you are thinking. Or not just those. I would hazard that the railway is behind all this.”

This fellow worked on the railway? I was already all at sea _and that had better damn well not be another nod!_

“Yes”, Mr. Davies sighed. “It opened a quarter of a century back but the effect on the town was not what everyone had hoped.”

Now I saw things more clearly. Although the advent of a railway mostly tended to lead to an increase in population there was often also a counter-effect, in that towns which were reached first drew in population from towns not yet connected. That effect could be intensified if a railway came late to somewhere as rural and isolated at here, in that people would use it to more easily leave their home town for a better life (or at least what they thought to be a better life) elsewhere.‡

“I did observe several empty properties as we drove through the town”, Sherlock said. “But that is not all, is it gentlemen? Our new friend here was seen by many as a most handsome solution to the town's woes – until Mr. Davies's return.”

And I was all at sea again!

“I do not understand”, I not-whined.

“You may have noticed the cross looks that Mr. Davies attracted as we drove through the town”, Sherlock said. 

“I did”, I said, feeling pleased that I had at least spotted something.

“What you may not have noticed”, he smiled, “is that all those looks came from the _ladies_ of the town.”

“So?” I asked. Sherlock grinned.

“Before the return of Mr. Davies”, he said, “more than one lady in this town employed the services of the very handsome local odd-job man. To do various things that needed doing; painting, decorating, repairs – _the lady of the house herself!_ ”

Ivo shuddered.

“It was a living”, he said, breaking his silence in a curious low tone. “I did not like it but the money – it was wonderful. My family have always known when to do things so the result would be what was wanted, even if many of them did not like waiting a week or more. I am your typical Welshman in many ways though I am English born and bred, so none of the husbands were surprised that their offspring looked the way they did.”

“Until Mr. Davies came on the scene and put an end to their wives' fun and games”, Sherlock said. “The solution seems easy enough.”

We all looked at him.

“What?” Mr. Davies asked.

“We shall book into the local hotel and spend a week here”, Sherlock smiled. “Very shortly this delightful little backwater will receive its third famous visitor in a number of days.”

“Third?” I asked.

“Of course”, he said. “After a famous consulting detective and his medical scribe who writes so wonderfully of his derring-do adventures.”

I just shook my head at him.

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All right, I had underestimated him. Do not go on about it!

Two days after we had checked into our hotel and my 'derring-do' detective had derring-done me so thoroughly that even a walk along the High Street was sheer bloody agony, I read in the local newspaper that a famous scientist was planning to visit the area next month as his family hailed from the area originally. Sir Archibald Hart-Tonge was developing a new blood test which, it was claimed, could detect blood diseases at an early age from just a single drop of a child's blood. Incidentally it could also soothe the fears of any father who, for whatever reason, suspected that their son was not actually their son and that their wives may have 'dallied' with another men.

Sherlock had a very busy day when that newspaper came out, as he was accosted by no less than _fifteen_ ladies in town, all of whom asked him if there was any way to stop this strange man from visiting the area. He promised to do what he could once back in London, but pointed out that Mr. Davies was a friend of his who had not been well received to the area. By an un-amazing coincidence the unfriendly looks that both he and Ivo had been getting stopped immediately!

Thankfully Sherlock was gentle with me after that, which meant that I got to enjoy some wonderful Marcher countryside with the love of my life. I even got to go out walking along the Dyke.

Eventually.

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_Notes:_   
_† 'Dai Hard', 'Dai Harder', 'Dai Another Day' and 'Dai's Closure'._   
_‡ Between 1841 and 1871 the town's population had risen from 1,400 to 1,700. The effect of the railway was severe; the branch had opened in 1875 and by 1901 the population had collapsed to 1250, down by over a quarter. By the 2011 census the population of the town, now spelled Presteigne (Welsh: Llanandras), had risen to a shade over 2700._

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	4. Case 315: Yorks And Lancaster ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Sometimes things just come together, in a case which outruns even Sherlock as a kind and generous man belatedly finds true happiness.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

This curious little matter primarily concerned two gentlemen from two very different previous cases, who had also had different results from my assistance. It also included my meddling twin brother Sherrinford who, I just knew, would be sitting somewhere with a smug expression on his face at having manipulated me through his very unfair advantage of having the Sight. I really hated people who smirked too much!

The first of those gentlemen was our friend Jet, one of those unfortunate black gentlemen who we had rescued from the Tankerville Club some twenty-two years back. Born Mr. John Edward Thomas Smith he had been the second-youngest of the fellows to have been saved, and although he had helped me out on several subsequent occasions I had remained anxious about him in particular. The excellent doctors at the sanatorium where I had sent all the men to recover had warned me that they considered him to be among the most fragile of fellows, and despite his great size – he was a very solid six foot six inches tall – I concurred with their opinion. Fortunately one of the many services that Miss St. Leger carried out for me over the years was to keep an eye on my friends, especially those who I knew might be reluctant to approach me for help.

Jet had married twice, with very different results. The first had been to a local girl and they had been very happy for some five years before she had succumbed to the terrible winter flu outbreak in the early Nineties. Then five years ago he had fallen for a rich young lady called Miss Edwina York, who had insisted that he change his surname to hers when they had tied the knot. That had made me wary enough, and I probably should have kept a closer eye on things had it not unhappily coincided with the terrible events concerning my ex-brother Torver's attack on me following the Veiled Lodger case. 

I had not been surprised when Jet's marriage had collapsed after just three months when his new mother-in-law had accused him of molesting her. Unfortunately for her and her daughter (the latter had been in on the plot as she had found someone better and richer), two of Jet's nephews had been there for the faked 'assault' and had informed their grandfather – who had both divorced his wife and disinherited his daughter.

The sequel was unexpected, to say the least. The nephews were, it turned out, the famous singers Mr. Dacre and Mr. D'Arcy York, better known at the time as the Choirboys and despite their both being just short of twenty years of age were already rich in their own right as the phonographic company owned by their father had released many of their recordings, some of which John and I owned. They had taken Jet on as their valet and, although he was all but old enough to have been their father, they very clearly loved him for the three of them were still together some five years on.

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One small but annoying consequence of John's rising literary fame was that he was increasingly called on by not only his surgery's richer clients but also their friends, who valued the _cachet_ of having been treated by a literary giant. More often than not these call-outs ranked among his most trifling cases which I knew annoyed him as they distracted him from more deserving patients, but on the upside these people also paid promptly which was a good thing as it made him even more financially secure. Hence he was away in eastern Buckinghamshire attending what had been reported as most likely a new case of the Black Death (i.e. most likely a mild sore throat) when I had an unexpected pair of visitors. Mr. Dacre and Mr. D'Arcy Bradley.

I had not met The Choirboys before, although I had of course had them checked out for Jet's sake. They were a year apart in age and physically similar although Mr. Dacre had blond hair and Mr. D'Arcy black. Rather like our friends the Selkirk twins the two young men were seldom apart, and our other friend Sweyn mourned their absence from his establishments since they had 'gone steady'' with Jet, as he had said that they had made several of his 'boys' really hit the high notes.

Compared to what John was probably treating just now, molly-house humour was likely incurable. Worse luck!

The two gentlemen sat down.

“This is all rather strange, sir”, Mr. Dacre York said. “We spoke to Jet as he knows you, and given the apparent urgency in the matter we felt that we had better come round and see you today.”

“Do go on”, I said.

“Jet is a wonderful fellow”, Mr. D'Arcy York said, “but as I am sure that you are aware sir, he has his weaknesses. One of them is that he has a very low opinion of his own appearance, and another is as you might imagine the age difference of a decade and a half between us. We love him and will still love him when we are in our sixties and he is in his eighties, but he finds that very hard to believe.”

I looked at him shrewdly.

“And he is coming up to his fortieth birthday”, I said, “which makes any man feel his age. You said that there was a degree of urgency. Is that it?”

“Not only that, sir”, Mr. D'Arcy York said. “You see, we are both well enough off but Grandfather, who was so good to us over Jet, wishes us to undertake a Continental Tour next year. Jet hates the idea of leaving England, and given his current state we do not wish to risk leaving him alone.”

I nodded.

“But the real urgency is what happened yesterday”, Mr. Dacre York said. “Jet is.... not simple-minded but very straightforward in his approach to life. Yesterday he was out shopping when he saw someone who looked like you, so being Jet he rushed up to the fellow and hugged him. It was of course not you, and he was immediately mortified.”

And I was immediately suspicious!

“Did he describe this fellow at all?” I asked.

“He said that the fellow actually had flaxen hair”, Mr. Dacre York said, “but when he first saw him from across the road it looked dark like yours. I suppose that that could be true; our brother Danny is an artist and he once told us that that could happen if the light was in the right place.”

 _Or if some evil, smirking, conniving twin of mine wanted to engender an encounter_ , I thought.

“This fellow was fine with it, thankfully”, Mr. D'Arcy York said. “The strange thing was, he told Jet that the red rose would bring him happiness. All very odd; we do not have any roses in our garden for one thing. He also said that you would help him if asked but only if we did it before tomorrow, Saturday.”

I wondered what my evil twin was plotting. The bastard was smirking somewhere, I just knew it!

“Someone people do seem to have the ability to see the future”, I conceded. “Perhaps something will happen tomorrow and it will enable me to help Jet. I do hope so; he is a fine fellow.”

“And great at getting us both dressed in the mornings”, Mr. D'Arcy York smiled, “even if it takes ages!”

His brother just rolled his eyes at him.

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The following day I had John back – well, what was left of John after I had welcomed him back – when we received a card at the ungodly hour of nine o' clock in the morning.

“'Master Hugh Diamond'”, John read on the card.

It did not immediately register with me at first, but then I placed the name and my eyebrows shot up. Hugh Diamond, godson of Hugh Lancaster. As in the red rose of Lancaster.

I could almost _hear_ my twin's smirk getting wider, damn him!

“It is someone with a connection to a case that I had during your time in Egypt”, I said, treading carefully around a still difficult subject for us both. “The island of Anglesey; a young rugby-player was being bullied and I put a stop to it. He was a Mr. Edward Diamond and I know that he named his son Hugh, after the friend who had brought me in on the case.”

 _(Also a man who had that saddest and most painful of afflictions, unrequited love_ , I added silently, thinking that life was not always fair but perhaps justice might be about to be finally and fully done. 

I blamed John for making me think like that!)

“We should have him up, then”, the villain said.

I nodded and told Betty to send Master Diamond up immediately.

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Master Hugh Diamond was nothing like his bear of a father, a slender youth in his late teenage years with flaxen hair and a solid, lantern-jawed face. He looked at us both curiously then smiled in greeting.

“Thank you for seeing me, gentlemen”, he said. “I am here in London with my godfather whom you assisted many years back, Mr. Holmes. I am the result of that assistance, I and my brothers and sister, so I owe you thanks for that too.”

“You are welcome here”, I smiled. “Your parents are well?”

He frowned at that for some reason.

“They are fine”, he said, “if unbearably soppy around each other. Father asked me to come to London with my godfather because.... it is all rather strange.”

He took a deep breath.

“I was coming home from school last week when I passed the pillar-box in the village”, he said. “There was a letter lying on the ground next to it so I assumed that it had fallen out somehow, and picked it up meaning to place it in the box. But when I looked at the address on the front, it was addressed to me of all people!”

He took a deep breath.

“It was only a few lines”, the boy said. “It said that my godfather would find true happiness in London, but only if I could get him there this weekend.”

“You get on well with your godfather?” I asked.

The boy looked almost pityingly at me.

“I am full sixteen years of age, sir”, he said coolly, “and while I have not seen much of the world I would have to have been blind not to have seen through my godfather at half that age. He very clearly loves my father and I know from the pain in his face when he tries to hide his feelings just how deep they run. I have tried to be a good godson to at least partly make up for him wanting what he cannot have. Mother knows of course but not Father; he is as oblivious as ever. I approached Mother over the letter and she arranged the trip for me, though she made sure that Father thought it was all his idea. Luckily I have often said that I wished to see the capital and besides, he always does what she tells him.”

I suppressed a smile at his attitude towards the older generation.

“There are over half a million men in London”, the boy said, “two million if you count all the adjoining towns. Finding someone right for Hugh would be like finding a needle in several hay-fields! I only hope that you can help.”

I smiled to myself. For once this love-match business might be easy.

“Where is your godfather now?” I asked.

“Likely moping in his hotel room”, the boy sighed. “I told him I was going round the bookshops, and I am trying to find something that will give him time to slip away and..... do things that someone my age desperately does not want to think about him doing thank you very much!”

“Which hotel are you staying at?” I asked with a smile.

“The New Metropolitan. I have Room 231 and he has 232.”

“You booked into separate rooms?” John asked, clearly surprised.

The boy blushed.

“I thought that if things worked out..... then it might be wise”, he said, seeming to suddenly find our fireside rug quite fascinating for some reason.

I had to admire his foresight. Although he might come to regret those adjoining rooms.

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Once our visitor was gone I sent round to our friend Sweyn and asked him if he could arrange to employ Jet for security purposes that afternoon (the Yorks had said that they would of course let him take time off if I could do anything for him). It was extremely short notice but the Viking came through for me, and I was able to go round to see Mr. Lancaster at his hotel. I did not of course say that his godson had approached me as he would likely have been mortified; instead I said that I had been on a case that had involved someone at the hotel and had noticed his name on the register. After some desultory conversation I was able to recommend Sweyn's molly-house in Euston to him. I then waited outside and, thankfully, he left just moments later and headed in the right direction.

Score!

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The following day Master Diamond was back in Baker Street, somehow contriving to look both pleased and traumatized.

“I am sure that there are worse things than hearing your own godfather screaming in the next room”, he grumbled, “let alone the fact that he could barely walk this morning!”

“It is terrible how some people smirk too much”, John agreed.

I stared at him suspiciously. I had detected a definite degree of snark in there, for which I could see no good reason. Or at least no good reason from anyone who wished to use the stairs in the next twenty-four hours.

“Your godfather got along with Jet?” I asked innocently. 

The boy looked at me suspiciously.

“How did you know his nickname?” he asked.

“A master does not divulge all his secrets”, I said loftily. 

“My godfather divulged all last night!” the boy sighed. “As well as this morning. Before _and_ after breakfast!”

I bit back a smile.

“Hugh says that he can see himself settling in London”, the boy sighed. “I will miss him but he is happy, and that is what is important in life.”

I exchanged a look with John. We were clearly both thinking the same; if this was the up and coming generation them England would be fine.

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	5. Case 316: The Adventure Of The Riviera Robbery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. One less than fully honest consulting detective and his trusting, long-suffering and easily gulled assistant head to the Riviera to solve a case of malicious gossip that threatens to turn into something rather more serious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the reference to this adventure in the original canon it was referenced only as 'a robbery on the Riviera'. Only in a later edition did some careless editor insert the word 'French' into that phrase.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Foreword: The Herculean reference in this story is that of the Fifth of that hero's Twelve Labours. King Augeas of Elis (the north-western part of the Greek Peloponnese) owned countless oxen and horses, and it was the great hero's job to clean out his dirty stables. In just one day. However, because the livestock were immortal they had produced rather a lot of.... political promises. Hercules achieved the task by diverting two rivers so that they flowed through the stables; Augeas refused to pay the promised one-tenth of his cattle so Hercules killed him and all but the only one of his sons who had supported his demand for payment, then placed this Phyleus on the throne. I did later suggest this to Sherlock while mentioning a certain lounge-lizard of a brother of his, and received only a mild look of disapproval.

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I had not sulked all the way from Paddington. I had not! And to prove it I was still not sulking on Platform One of Whitland Station in Carmarthenshire as I waited for the approaching branch-line train to our final destination. 

A destination that absolutely definitely did _not_ have a Gallic flavour.

“You, Sherlock Holmes, are a _mean man!”_

There was silence from the blue-eyed bastard next to me.

“And you smirk far too loudly!”

“What is wrong, John?” asked someone who was not getting laid – or doing any laying – any time in the immediate future. Probably. “I told you true. I said that we were having a case on the Riviera.”

I scowled at him.

“You know damn well that I thought you meant the _French_ Riviera!” I grumbled. “Not the Welsh one!” 

Not that I had any particular liking for France especially with the uncertain situation on the Continent just now, but Sherlock had come out of his room last night wearing a new swimming costume and had asked what I had thought of it. Talk about tight-fitting! It served him right that he would be the one to have to explain to the shop just how it had ended up getting torn like that! Damnation, I was but mere mortal man!

I looked around as the Pembroke branch train came to a halt and began to disgorge its passengers, and sighed. 

“Six and a half years”, I muttered as we got in. He looked at me in surprise.

“What is 'six and a half years'?” he asked.

I said no more, but of course he got it.

“The Merridew case when I.... was attacked coming back from Ireland”, he said. “Yes, I would have come through this station although of course I did not notice it at the time....”

He looked at me and smiled.

“Never mind”, he said consolingly. “Maybe when we finally get to Saundersfoot you can show me that you have still got it in you.”

“You will be the one with something in you!” I retorted childishly although I could not help but smile as we boarded the train.

“Once we are comfortably settled into our hotel there you can help me out of the nice new silk panties that I am wearing.”

Suddenly our first-class compartment was no longer that fascinating, plus the fact that I seemed to be having some difficulty with my breathing. He moved back to sit opposite me then briefly lowered his belt.

Black and yellow lacy ones, because we were in Wales! He really was trying to kill me!

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I sighed. I really was getting old. I had duly divested one far too cheeky detective of both his smirk and his Cambrian panties, the latter being torn to shreds in my frustration, and had then felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude when he had suggested a long hot soak afterwards. Even better, the bath-tub was one of those huge ones into which we could both fit. 

I sighed happily as my tormentor wrapped himself around me.

“You were mean!” I muttered easing back into his muscled body. “Wearing those all the way from London without telling me.”

“Had I done, so I very much doubt that they would have made it to the end of the Paddington platform!” he grinned, leaning forward for a kiss. “We are here because I received a rather worrisome letter from a Reverend Charles Jones, the parish priest of St. Cadoc's Church in the town. He is most concerned that someone has been spreading malicious gossip about a new arrival in his domain.”

“A lot of gossip is malicious”, I pointed out. “That is why people enjoy spreading it.”

“I suspect that there may be more to his simple request than meets the eye”, Sherlock said rubbing himself lazily up against by backside. Incredibly and despite my aching body Little John started to perk up.

“You are asking for it!” I grumbled. “But because I love you so much I will settle for some of that manly embracing that you love so much.”

All these years and still; no-one could do judgemental silences like my Sherlock. _Worse luck!_

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The Reverend Charles Jones was a tall patrician of a cleric, some fifty years of age and with greying hair. Which reminded me; I needed to get my little brother back for sending me that advertisement for hair colourant just because he had been the one to walk in on me and Sherlock that time when we.... well, when we.......

All right, on reflection he may perhaps have had cause. Just this once, mind!

“I am very grateful that you have come, gentlemen”, the cleric said as we sat down in his little office at the back of the impressive town church. “I only wish that it could have been sooner.”

“Has their been a further development?” Sherlock asked. 

Our host nodded.

“The Goshen sisters have been burgled”, he said. “And they are blaming poor Mr. James!”

“I think that you had better start at the beginning”, Sherlock said firmly. “Your letter was quite informative, but I am sure that there is a lot more that you can tell us now that we are actually here.”

The vicar nodded. I noted that he had obviously read my works because he had coffee ready for us and lots of it. Indeed 'someone' was already on his second cup to the cleric's well-concealed amusement.

“Four months ago, a gentleman called Mr. Llewelyn James moved to this parish”, he began. “His family came originally from Tenby and I believe that some cousins of his still live in the area, although he is not close to them. He is quite wealthy as he had built up and then sold of a number of gymnasium businesses. He had decided to settle here presumably for retirement although I believe that he can be barely fifty years of age.”

Being the bastard that he far too frequently was, Sherlock had made a point of mentioning that one of the gymnasiums that Mr. James had held a share in was the one that Mr. Blaze Trevelyan, brother to the most annoying Cornish ex-fisherman of all time, had worked at. I had no idea why he had had to bring that up; he knew that I was not fond of the family despite Blaze's marriage to Mr. Mycroft Holmes's ex-wife Rachael, a union that we had helped bring about. Even if it had exposed us to a certain baleful presence that my life would have been far better without!

“Fifty is young indeed”, said someone who was not getting lucky that evening.

I scowled, and Sherlock just looked at me. I should also have mentioned that the room was very cold. That was why I shuddered just then.

“The late Mr. and Mrs. Goshen lived in a large house on the sea-front”, the vicar explained, mercifully unaware of my future sufferings. “'Caldy House', one of those ridiculously large places. They had four children who survived to adulthood but the two brothers both married money and moved to London where they did very well for themselves, so the sisters got the house. Neither of them married, by the way. They had the house converted into numbers 1, 2 and 3 Caldy Cottages. They live in number 2 themselves, rent out number 3 to two separate tenants and sold number 1 outright to Mr. James.”

“Who are the people living in number 3?” Sherlock asked.

“A young married couple called the Penistones live on the ground floor”, the vicar said. “I believe that he works in a bank in Pembroke. They have no children. The first floor is occupied by a Miss Goldsworthy; she is a secretary at an estate agent in Whitland. All very nice people.”

Sherlock pressed his long fingers together and stared at the vicar. I knew that look. The cleric sighed.

“I must admit that the Goshens are the worst gossips in town”, he admitted. “We all have our failings.”

“You say that there has now been a burglary?” Sherlock asked. The vicar nodded.

“Last night, or I would have telegraphed you about it”, he said. “Helen and Katherine – the sisters – are distraught as they lost some jewellery which, although not valuable in monetary terms, had been bequeathed to them from their late mother and had great sentimental value. It was insured but that is small consolation; one cannot replace treasured memories.”

Sherlock frowned.

“The Goshen sisters have the middle of the three 'cottages' created from their parents' larger property?” he asked.

“Yes, number two as I said.”

My friend thought for a moment.

“I think that we need to pay a call on Mr. James”, he said. “You did not say if he is married or not?”

“He is not”, the vicar said.

Sherlock looked at him again and the fellow blushed. 

_How did he do that?_

“I did wonder if one or both of the sisters were interested in him”, the vicar said, rather awkwardly. “But he is... I am not sure really what to make of him, gentlemen. I would rather that you see him yourself and draw your own conclusions.”

“We shall repair to Mr. James's house today”, Sherlock said, rising to his feet. 

I did not see his urgency over a mere burglary but I supposed that he had his reasons.

Indeed he had.

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Mr. Llewelyn James was.... well, like the vicar I too was not sure what to make of him if truth be told. Physically he was a most impressive specimen; handsome, over six foot tall and with the sort of build that would have made our friend Mr. Sweyn Godfreyson all too ready to take him on despite his being his age. Yet there was something about him which suggested that his new abode might not be the only thing in the vicinity that was semi-detached. I wondered what sort of questions Sherlock might ask him and for that matter if he would get any answers. 

My friend spent some time looking around what seemed to me to be a perfectly normal living-room before finally speaking.

“Have you ever considered marriage, sir?” 

All right, that one was unexpected if not bordering on the personal, I thought. Fortunately our host did not seem offended.

“I have not, sir”, he said. “I enjoy the single life and always have done.”

“Are you enjoying your life here?” Sherlock asked.

The man hesitated.

“I had been”, he sighed. “Until all this happened.”

Sherlock smiled knowingly. 

“It is your good fortune that your travails have drawn the concern of your parish priest”, he said. “He has called me in to assist in the matter. I believe that I can help you.”

The man looked at him curiously.

“What can you do?” he asked. “No man alive can stop the power of gossip, and that is what is being used against me.”

“I intend to take a lesson from the ancient hero Hercules”, Sherlock said, much to my surprise, “and in particular the Labour he undertook to clean the Augean Stables. If you would be guided by me for one week sir, I believe that we may be able to remedy matters.”

The man seemed unsure but eventually nodded.

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“What was that all about?” I demanded once we had left. 

Sherlock smiled and covertly gestured to the cottage next door to the one we had just emerged from. Two ladies in their mid-forties were gardening and also very evidently eavesdropping on our conversation. Any closer to the fence and they would have fallen over it!

“Top secret”, he whispered just loudly enough for them to hear. “I shall fill you in when we get back to the hotel.”

He did not, the bastard!

All right, he did not fill me in with the information as such. He made up for it by filling me in..... look, gentlemen have _needs_ , you know!

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Three days later we attended the Sunday service at St. Cadoc's, where the pews were I thought uncommonly hard. The vicar had caught us beforehand and had asked to speak with us when the service was over, so we met him in his office.

“The Goshen sisters are worried” he told us. “They are sure that they heard _gunshots_ from inside Mr. James's house on Friday. And yesterday he went to the shooting-range at Pembroke.”

“People are allowed to visit such places”, Sherlock said dryly. “How did the ladies chance to know about that, pray?”

“Miss Katherine was doing some shopping and saw him enter”, the vicar said.

“That is strange”, Sherlock said. “I myself once passed the shooting-range while walking around the town, and there were no shops anywhere near it. I do hope that Miss Katherine has not taken to following her neighbour around merely to find gossip.”

The vicar looked like he wanted to deny such an idea but instinctively glanced heavenward, presumably fearful that his employer might not take too kindly to such a blatant lie being uttered in the House of the Lord. Sherlock grinned.

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The following day the vicar came to see us at the hotel.

“Miss Helen is beside herself!” he said. “She was looking out of her back window last night and saw Mr. James dragging something large and bulky into his shed. _At a quarter to midnight!”_

“Miss Helen seems to keep some rather irregular hours”, I observed not at all cattily. 

“She said that she got up for a glass of warm milk and a biscuit”, the vicar said.

Sherlock just gave him a look. At least the fellow had the decency to blush.

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The following day Sherlock woke me in the approved manner, with a blow-job that had me crying tears of gratitude. What was left of me was still lying there gasping for breath when he returned with the newspaper.

“Poor old fellow!” he said consolingly. “It must be difficult being old.”

“I am only two and half years older than you!” I retorted. I may have felt more like twelve and a half just then but I would never have admitted it. It was bad enough knowing that a certain birthday was lurking not that many months away like a horrible monster, or worse, like one of Sherlock's mother's terrible stories.

“Nine hundred and sixty-five days”, he said primly. I decided that being all but married to a genius was not all that it was cracked up to be and pouted before turning my attentions to an absurdly heavy newspaper.

“Some government official called Mr. Phyleus Rivers has vanished without a trace”, I read from the front page. “Possibly involved in the disappearance of certain high-level documents, it is thought he might be heading for one of the ports facing Ireland to seek embarkation there and thence to the New World.”

“I cannot investigate every disappearance of man and beast”, he yawned. “Nap time.”

He cuddled up against me and was under in seconds. I stared down at him and fondled his permanently untidy hair. I so loved this man!

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The following day we had just returned from a walk when the vicar called again. This time he looked positively alarmed. 

“I am seriously beginning to wonder about Mr. James!” he said. 

“Which of the sisters 'just happened' to catch him doing something irregular this time?” Sherlock asked dryly. I sniggered. 

“Miss Katherine”, the vicar said. “She said she heard a noise outside last night and looked out into the garden. She saw him digging a large hole about six foot long. He must have been at it all night because it was filled in this morning – except that there was some extra earth beside it!”

“What time did she see him?” I asked.

“Just after midnight.”

“Miss Katherine is very observant”, Sherlock smiled. “As well as an uncommonly light sleeper. _Like her sister!”_

“They both came to me when they read today's paper”, the vicar said blushing again. “With this Mr. Rivers having disappeared they thought... well gentleman, I am sure that you can imagine what they thought.”

“They really should call in the police, then”, Sherlock said, to my surprise. “If this Mr. James is up to something then they have the right, nay the duty to investigate. It may be that he had some connection to this Mr. Rivers – the article did mention that he has Welsh relatives – and if so, the sisters could well have witnessed part of a cover-up.”

“Are you sure that I should encourage them to report the matter?” the vicar asked dubiously.

“In this case yes”, Sherlock said firmly. “I am one hundred per cent certain that we need to clear up a crime here.”

I was obviously having a(nother) slow day or I would have spotted the double meaning there.

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Constable Lyndon Jones scowled mightily. Given his bulk, it was an impressively wide scowl.

“I am _most_ annoyed!” he said, glaring at the Goshen sisters who seemed to be trying to hide behind each other. “Some idiot student prank leaves a naked mannequin at your door so your neighbour tries to spare your blushes by first hiding the thing and then disposing of it. Yet you go and report him for all his pains!”

“We did not know!” Miss Katherine quavered. 

“Now the jewellery that you were _certain_ had been stolen turns up in a drawer in your own house!” the policeman snapped. “If Mr. James's maid had not come round and suggested that she knew dusters were kept in that drawer, we might still be blaming her master for that as well. You ladies owe him an apology. Or two!”

Both ladies looked horrified.

“Legally speaking Mr. James _could_ pursue a case against these ladies for bearing false witness”, Sherlock said airily. “It is a rarely used prosecution but it is still on the statute books, as I know from a case I was once involved in. An apology would be quite advisable considering that the alternative is a spell in gaol. Thank you for coming, constable.”

The policeman gave the ladies another dark look and left the room. Sherlock smiled knowingly.

“Ladies”, he said. “Doctor Watson and I must be returning to the capital. I must say that we have enjoyed our time on the Welsh Riviera, although I do hope that we are not obliged to return.”

“Why not?” Miss Katherine asked. 

“Let me tell you a story before we leave”, Sherlock smiled. “Two ladies, bored with a quiet life in a small seaside resort where there is precious little to gossip about, are delighted to sell part of their parents' former property to a strikingly handsome middle-aged gentleman of impressive build. They go to a lot of trouble – the house is filled with the sort of touches that a wife would normally place there for a husband – only for the strikingly handsome middle-aged gentleman of impressive build to show precisely zero interest in either of them.”

_So that was why Sherlock had looked so interested in Mr. James's room!_

“Rebuffed, the ladies plan a most cruel and horrible revenge”, Sherlock went on. “Certain items of jewellery – personal rather than valuable – are planted in the gentleman's house. This is quite easy because since the three houses were once one our ladies have keys to all the connecting doors. They plan to report the so-called theft, wait a week or so while making a fuss, and then claim that one of them saw one of the items 'while popping round'.”

“Unfortunately for their foul scheme their plan is discovered by a visiting consulting detective and his friend, who have been called in by the local vicar to investigate the spreading of malicious gossip about the newcomer. The detective is _not_ amused at this vile attempt to destroy a fellow human being for no reason other than pure spite, and lays a cunning counter-plot. To their alarm the ladies' neighbour suddenly begins to behave in a most sinister manner. Shots are heard from inside his house, he visits a local gun club and worse, he is seen hiding a large and heavy human-sized object in his shed. This, coupled with a fake article about the disappearance of a man in the area that the detective has arranged to be in all the newspapers, leads the ladies to suspect the worst. Finally the neighbour is seen digging a hole in his garden overnight clearly having buried a human-sized object. The detective prompts the vicar, who is quite innocent in this affair, to advise the ladies that yes, it is time to inform the police. And they find – a naked mannequin evidently stolen from a local shop by some inebriated students. ”

The two ladies stared at him in stony silence.

“The detective has also taken the precaution of employing a professional thief to search the gentleman's house and retrieve the jewels”, Sherlock said, “and he asks the same person to replace them in the ladies' house while they are at the police-station. He then quickly arranges for Mr. James's maid to call round and suggest looking for a duster in the same draw. I do not doubt that had your own maid found them there you would have bought her silence.”

“It was only a bit of fun”, Miss Helen whined.

“A vile and malicious attempt to wilfully destroy a fellow human being?” Sherlock snapped angrily. _“'A bit of fun'?_ I have had more than one case in the past when a person placed under such duress has tried to take their own life! Let me make something very clear to you, ladies; had such an eventuality occurred to poor Mr. James, then I would have strained every sinew to have brought you both to court on a charge of wilful manslaughter! Then to have made sure that the judge gave you the longest sentences possible!”

They both recoiled from his righteous anger. He spared them one last glare before sweeping from the room. I scuttled after him.

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“People like that make me so angry!” he said later as we stood waiting for the train back to Whitland and our connection to London. “They do not care about what they see as 'amusement'.”

“You should work out that anger on something”, I said moving closer to him. “I am sure that we can find a private compartment on the express.”

We did, even if I had to have a sit-down in the gentlemen's waiting-room at Paddington Station before I could face the bumpy (and thankfully short!) cab ride back to Baker Street. But at least Sherlock was happy and that made me happy too. Now if only I could summon up enough energy for one of those smile-things......

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	6. Case 317: The Adventure Of The Loan Arranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Another face from the past returns to the dynamic duo's lives, and they have to try to stop a crime before it can happen. And to ensure that the right people get all the credit.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

My beloved John is the most wonderful of human beings, but like all of us he has his weaknesses. One, most fortuitously, is his jealous nature which is particularly aroused every time my friends Benji and Lowen visit, something that always involves a lot of angry growling and is always followed by some possessive love-making as he once more makes me his. A cynical person might suggest that I encourage these boys to visit quite frequently but that would be most unfair. It is not as if I pay them to come round and make John jealous.

I do not pay them _that_ much.

John's other key character twist related to this was his fears about my somehow losing interest in him in that he is two and a half years my senior, and in particular at the time of this story that he was fast approaching what the devious Mrs. Rockland had called his 'forty-tenth birthday' (he had pouted so adorably at that; hopefully she had gotten far enough down the stairs not to hear the consequences of her words as he had proven very firmly that he still had it in him, or at least that he had it in me!). So the very last thing that he needed just now was a reminder of just how fast the years were passing – which was unfortunate, as that was exactly what he got.

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It was a warm August day when we were returning to 221B from the bank where John had just deposited his latest cheque from his publishers. I loved the fact that my successes in solving crime had helped to make him financially secure and had stopped at least one worry that I knew had dogged our earlier years together, even although I would have helped him if necessary (and covertly had on more than one occasion, primarily by encouraging slow-paying patients to cough up or else). Also Mrs. Malone was baking chocolate cake with her delicious chocolate custard today, so all in all he was looking very happy.

In retrospect we should have known what was coming next.

We entered 221B to find two young gentlemen talking to Bobbie, one of the maids. Both were in their early twenties, the taller one blond, athletic and handsome and the shorter one darker, more muscular and clearly of foreign extraction, possibly Red Indian and keeping very close to his friend. The blond gentlemen saw us approaching and turned to greet us.

“Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson!” he beamed.

We both looked at him in confusion. We did not know this gentleman from Adam! He chuckled.

“I know that time can change a fellow”, he said, “but you surely remember the upstart little schoolboy who brought you the case of 'The Copper Beeches'?”

Now I recognized him. Master – now _Mr._ – Clarence Legant, who had come to us over what had started as a case of arboreal vandalism and ended with the capture of a criminal and the recovery of their haul. And the criminal's 'execution' by his accomplice Professor Moriarty, against whom we had been barely months from our final encounter. That had to have been 1890, some eleven years ago.”

I knew from the sudden fall in John's expression that he had worked that number out too. The passage of time was before us, replete with the vigour of youth. My beloved would need at least two helpings of cake to get over this, He would likely push for (and get) three.

“It is good to see you and your friend”, I smiled. “You must come in and tell us what brings you back to our door.”

We headed towards the stairs as Chem emerged from his and his wife's rooms, looking annoyed for some reason.

“I thought I heard you”, he said. “Violet said that that useless twit of a brother of yours was round earlier wanting to see you, Mr. Holmes. The one with the slappable face; he said that he would be back later. Like a bad smell!”

I groaned. We had gone for some little time without a visit from Randall and absence had not made the heart grow the least bit fonder. But I had been hoping to continue testing that theory for at least a few more.... decades.

“You must be Mr. Malone”, Mr. Legant smiled. “I have read about you in the doctor's stories. Are you enjoying the works of Mrs. Harwood?”

Chem stepped back in shock.

“That tripe?” he snorted. “Women's novels? I would never as much as look at such rubbish!”

“But you are reading it now”, Mr. Legant said.

“How do you.... what makes you say that?” Chem spluttered. 

Mr. Legant gestured downwards.

“My work-place has a small waiting-room”, he said, “and we have a variety of books for our customers. Mrs. Harwood's are quite unique in the rose-pink edging that is applied to their pages, and which leaves a faint mark on the fingers of anyone who reads them.”

Poor Chem spluttered again and left us, quickly. I chuckled and led the way upstairs.

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“You did say that you always wanted to be a detective”, I recalled as we all sat down upstairs. I noted both that Mr. Legant's friend sat much closer than was socially acceptable and, more worryingly, that John was still more silent than usual, clearly depressed over the evidence of time's passing sat before us. That worried me. 

Mr. Legant smiled.

“I was fortunate in one aspect of that ambition”, he said. “A rich uncle of mine died and he knew of my interest in such matters. He left me a loans business in London which I have since successfully expanded. That is what you might call my 'proper job' but I do follow investigative matters in my spare time. Much of my actual work also involves checks on the people that I might or might not choose to lend to. Indeed it is that which has brought me here today, but first I had better introduce my silent friend.”

He turned to the other gentleman who was almost in his lap by this time.

“This is Tommy”, he said, his voice now suddenly much more gentle. “My late uncle travelled a lot in the western United States and died out there; Tommy brought his body back to England. He is from one of the native tribes out that way; I believe from what a friend of mine who knows such things that it may be the Comanche but he does not speak of his past, and I do not ask. His full name is Tonto of the Silver Heels because he is such a fast runner. He speaks English perfectly and with no accent at all yet he rarely talks to other people.”

He placed his hand gently on that of the other gentleman, who gave him a look of such adoring love that even I felt a tear in my eye. John obviously had a cold coming on as he reached for his handkerchief.

“Uncle Geoff asked that I take care of him”, Mr. Legant said quietly, “and I have sworn on the Good Book so to do until the end of my days. He is part of the reason that I am here today, although I would not be parted from him even if it were not.”

He smiled again at his friend before continuing. 

“One of Tommy's greatest abilities is that he is able to render himself invisible to other people”, he said. “I do not mean physically of course, but I have observed people chatting away to each other with him a few yards away and to then stop when they see me. That as you may imagine is most useful when I need to find out information for my business, for like both you and the doctor here I have very quickly discovered that people do not for some strange reason always tell one the whole truth.”

I smiled at his astute observation.

“We were down at a police-station last week concerning a fraudulent claim by someone”, our visitor said, “and as usual Tommy had slipped away from me. I do not like it when he is not with me but I knew that there was always the chance that he might overhear something interesting, and this time he did. One of the constables was talking to another and he observed a curious fact about three burglaries that had happened in North London of late. In all three cases the family who were targeted had a son at the same school, Harvey's Academy in Fitzrovia. Since my business is based on mathematical calculations I performed an analysis, and worked out the likelihood of that occurring by chance alone to be a shade less than one in twelve thousand.”

“You believe that the school is somehow involved in these burglaries?” I asked. 

“I do”, he said.

“Why did the constables not approach their sergeant over this?” John spoke up at last. 

“The sergeant at the station is a particularly unpleasant specimen called Mr. Craig Whitefeather”, Mr. Legant frowned. “The constable being spoken to said he considered that his superior – he called him 'Feather-brain', which given his reputation is cruel but accurate – would think him less than intelligent for offering such a suggestion. That is not exactly how he put it but somehow my dear mother knows when I utter bad words even when I use them on the other side of London, and we are going back to Gants Hill for dinner this very Sunday. She loves Tommy of course, the only time I have ever seen the fellow blush was when she said what handsome children we might have had together.”

“Coincidences can happen”, I said, “but like you I suspect that this is far from being one of them. I do not suppose you know the dates and/or places that these burglaries took place?”

“I am afraid not, sir.”

“I have some contacts who can find that out”, I said. “I dare say that I can get a list of boys at that illustrious academy to see which ones have been targeted and, more importantly, which ones are likely to be next.”

Tommy suddenly turned and looked fixedly at his friend, who stared back before sighing.

“Not now, Tommy”, he sighed. “We are not that far from the office. You will have to wait.”

“He can use the bathroom here”, I offered. Mr. Legant shook his head.

“It is not the bathroom that he wants”, he sighed. “It is the Other. We had better go; the journey will be rough enough as it is.”

He may have been right, as Tommy was all over him as we said our farewells and Mr. Legant tried to walk down the stairs without falling over the fellow wrapped around him. I chuckled.

“The next generation”, I said. “I suppose us older ones must accept the inevitable and start to wind down, eh? I have to go out for a moment but I will not be long.”

He did not even acknowledge me, still lost in thought over our visitors. I smiled and left him.

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Sergeant Templar came round later that day to bring some information that I required about the case, but despite three slices of chocolate cake (all with custard) John's mood did not improve. I said nothing. I had my own ideas as to how the situation might be remedied.

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The following morning Miss St. Leger came round with the information that I had requested of her. She groaned when she saw me.

“I know that look!” she sighed. “The smugness is right off the scale! Do you _have_ to be so damn obvious?”

“What?” I asked innocently. 

“The fact you look like the cat that got the cream and this place is minus one Doctor Watson, who I would wager is through that door still in bed. Or at least what is left of him.”

“Not much”, I grinned. “We had someone from an old case call round which was why I needed this information. He had a colleague who hails from one of the North American native tribes, and that gave me the idea to go to a certain store and pick up some war-paint.”

“Sherlock!”

“I did not say where I _put_ the war-paint....”

“I have to sleep tonight!” she grumbled, “and now I shall have that image running through my brain. Ugh!”

At that perhaps less than timely moment the bedroom door opened and John staggered out in just his dressing-gown (although on reflection our visitor might be glad he had remembered that much!). He crossed to the bathroom, then went in and shut the door behind him, not seeming to notice either of us.

“All those stories about killing someone through sex”, she sighed. “Trust me to have to work with someone intent on proving it!”

I sniggered unashamedly.

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Fortunately John was in slightly better shape when Mr. Legant arrived with his companion later that day. Perhaps I could relate to Tommy even more; the financier looked almost as bad as John did, yawning while his silent companion looked all too smug. I was sure that I never looked like that after..... well, hardly ever. 

Not that often. And never without just cause.

“Thankfully business is done for the day”, Mr. Legant said, easing himself carefully down onto the couch where he was immediately joined by an attentive Tommy. “The Loan Arranger can close the ranch.”

“Pardon?” I asked. He blushed.

“That is the name of my uncle's business”, he said. “The Loan Arranger. It is a little embarrassing but he wished for me to maintain it and it was the least that I could do. He even left me his Stetson and mask that he had; I have no idea why the latter but.... well, Tommy seems to like me wearing it.”

Tommy nestled closer to him as he spoke and Mr. Legant kissed his hair lightly. I thought fondly of my own Stetson which Mr. Lannister had given me from our case assisting him; it was high time that it saw the light of day again. Along with the chaps that I had purchased later. A mask would be a nice addition, and maybe I could get a holster.....

Have you found out anything?” our visitor asked.

“A few things”, I said, pulling myself away from some Very Happy Thoughts. “The most worrisome is that the three robberies had something else in common – they each took place on the night of a New Moon. And the next one of those is two days away.”

“What about likely targets?” Mr. Legant asked. Tommy leaned into him and he ruffled the fellow's long dark hair. 

“I have narrowed that down to six”, I said. “Harvey's Academy takes only the richest boys so my original list was over seventy, but I found that the three boys whose families were targeted did all have one other thing in common. The school allowed them to take two optional subjects in their final year and all three chose Medieval History. The six others who took that course all live in large homes unfortunately, although I suppose so does almost any family who can afford to send its sons there.”

I passed him the list and he read it, frowning. Then he passed it back to me.

“They will next go for Lord Stanmore's house, 'Belmont'”, he said confidently.

“Why? I asked, perplexed.

“Because he is the only one to have something in common with the three victims thus far”, he said. “All four are Liberal Unionists.”

I silently cursed myself. Why had I not spotted that? Then I noticed that Tommy was pawing at Mr. Legant, who looked at him first in surprise and then shock.

“Oh come on!” he protested. “After last night _and_ the Stetson?”

Tommy pulled one of the saddest faces I had ever seen on any man or woman, as if his friend was the meanest mean person ever to be mean to some poor suffering friend of his. I thought even Benji would have been proud of that one. Mr. Legant sighed.

“It looks like it is back to the office for us”, he said heavily. “I am beginning to think that you had ulterior motives in getting me to buy that new couch, Tommy. You will inform us of developments, Mr. Holmes?”

“I will”, I said. “We have your address.”

“Assuming this horn-dog does not kill me through sexual exhaustion, I shall look forward to hearing from you. Tommy, if you trip me up going down the stairs _this_ time I could well end up in hospital, and I may be barred from sex for weeks.”

And the fellow had the Quivering Lip as well. A smart employer and a talented underling. They really were the future.

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“It is wonderful the way that he can look so pitiful”, I observed once our guests had gone. “I only hope that he does not abuse that power.”

John shook his head at that for some strange reason.

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Fortunately all three burglaries had taken place in the small hours of the morning, so I could be fairly confident that 'Belmont' would be targeted in the next twenty-four hours. Unfortunately that was where my good luck ended. The place was on the obnoxious Sergeant Whitefeather's 'patch' and I most certainly did not wish for him to get any credit from capturing the thieves in the act. 

After some thought I contacted Miss St. Leger again and arranged for one of her agents to deliver an anonymous tip-off to the sergeant's station that 'Kendal Place', the house of one of the other parents that was some way from 'Belmont', was the intended target. Then I went round to see our friend Sergeant Templar. Note that _I_ went round; John was in no fit state to manage the stairs after what I had put him through last night. That new holster seemed to have brought out the wild thing in me! 

Sergeant Templar fully appreciated my wariness about intruding on another station's territory. Unfortunately the intelligence that we had on the burglars suggested that there had been at least six of them, so we would need a fair number of constables to catch them all. But I had an idea about that.....

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The following day was a Thursday and we arranged to meet Mr. Legant at his offices shortly before he opened for business. I had been gentle with John the night before and he was able to walk in a fairly straight line with only a slight limp. The scowl when I had suggested a walking-stick that morning had been hilarious!

The same could not be said for poor Mr. Legant, who looked terrible! As for Tommy.... well! I whispered to John that I never looked that smug after..... things. I did not know why he rolled his eyes like that.

“He broke me!” Mr. Legant muttered as he lounged on the couch. “I thought he was after... you know, when he got me to ordered that huge swivel-chair along with the couch, but thank God he did. Even with that, sitting upright is going to be agony!”

I smiled in sympathy. I did not, as someone claimed later, smirk that the coming generation did not have _that_ much energy!

“I have some excellent news”, I said. “You were right about 'Belmont' being the next target. The thieves went there last night and they have all been caught.”

Mr. Legant smiled, then winced as he sat up slightly too fast.

“I suppose the only downside is that that awful Sergeant Whitefeather will get the credit”, he said.

“Actually no”, I said. “He and his men were out following what turned out to be a false lead some distance away. _Most_ unfortunate.”

The young fellow looked sharply at me. I nodded slowly.

“Someone tipped my friend Sergeant Templar's station that 'Maylands' was to be targeted”, I told him. “As you know that is not far from 'Belmont'. While they were there one of them spotted movement across the park and they all went to investigate. They caught the villains red-handed.”

Mr. Legant looked dubious at that.

“Westbourne Park is a fair size”, he said. “That fellow must have had good eyesight to have spotted movement the other side of it, especially at night.”

“Yes”, I said. “A most fortuitous coincidence that he had brought his binoculars along, was it not? Just not for the thieves. Or for Sergeant Whitefeather's promotion prospects for that matter.”

“Have they found how it was done yet, or is it too soon?” Mr. Legant asked, yawning.

“Very cleverly”, I said. “One of the gang worked at the school as an assistant on the history course. As part of their studies the boys had to draw plans of their home and say how they would have been defended from a modern-day attack. The thieves thus had a full plan of each property complete with burglar alarms and escape routes. I have spoken with Lord Stanmore and informed him that you deserve some of the credit for this.”

He smiled at me but before he could say anything Tommy pawed at him again. Mr. Legant looked across at his friend. I do not think I have ever seen anyone's face fall quite so far quite so fast.

“Ye Gods, _already?”_ We are opening in fifteen minutes!”

Yes, there was the Quivering Lip right on schedule. I smiled and extracted a small jar from my pocket which I placed on the table.

“Aftercare unguent, courtesy of 'That House' just down the road from 221B”, I smiled. “I have a feeling that you will soon be needing rather a lot of it.”

“I am beginning to think that he took my mother literally and is trying to get me pregnant!” Mr. Legant moaned, pocketing the jar. “Promise me that you will come to my funeral?”

“We shall see you around”, I smiled. “Or what is left of you. Take care!”

We left, being careful to ensure that the sign on the outer door still read 'Closed'. Even through the door we heard a moan, then a slamming door as Tommy took his prize into the distant office.

“The coming generation”, I chuckled. “Quite literally in Mr. Legant's case!”

My perfectly accurate observation did not merit _that_ much of an eye-roll! Besides, there tended to be Consequences when someone did that.....

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There were indeed Consequences!

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	7. Case 318: The Adventure Of The Sanguine Samurai

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Far Eastern politics once more impinges on the lives of Sherlock and John – and this time it ends in a death!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Non-graphic mention of suicide.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I have belatedly come to accept John's insistence that one often has to start stories by explaining things that one would end up having to explain later anyway. In this case we were concerned, rather more directly this time, with the Land of the Rising Sun.

John had explained the political situation as regards Anglo-Japanese relations in our Stour Islands case (The Adventure Of The Bruce-Partington Plans) a few years back, and since then those relations had improved slightly as the Japanese had been naturally resentful at having been forced by Russia, France and Germany to give up some of their gains from their recent war with China, especially as the Russians had insisted that they be returned to China and then immediately snaffled them for themselves. The Japanese saw (much more clearly than our own politicians, it has to be said) that an alliance with us would enable them to further improve their armed forces before their next attempt at expansion, which as things turned out was only three years away and would overturn those Russian gains as well as being the first time in modern history that an Asian Power had beaten a (predominantly) European one. That two island nations on almost opposite sides of the globe could ally together showed I supposed just how small a place the world was becoming in the twentieth century, but the Japanese were a very different culture to our own, as has been shown by their war against China since 1931† which has placed them beyond the Pale of world opinion. Except in Berlin and Rome, of course. Yes, a very different culture to our own.

As we were about to find out most forcibly.

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This adventure began in early September, a cold and damp day in what was supposed to be summer. The newspapers were full of the shocking news from the United States that President McKinley had been assassinated by a anarchist, and his vice-president Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt had had to take over. The latter's more assertive foreign policies would later strain Anglo-American relations somewhat but all that lay in the future.

The two of us were sat reading quietly in Baker Street when Olivia brought us up a card. I looked curiously at it.

“'Captain Quentin Sholto'”, I said. “An address in London and two clubs. His name is unknown to me.”

John frowned for some reason, then his expression suddenly cleared.

“Pugwash!” he exclaimed. I looked at him in surprise.

“Pardon?” I asked. He blushed.

“Major Thaddeus Sholto was my commanding officer for a time in Egypt”, he said. “He was a year younger than me and a very sound fellow; his family came from Northumberland too so we had that in common, although he was from down Hexham way. This must be some relation of his given the unusual name; it cannot be a son because I know that he only had three daughters before his wife died out there.”

I looked at him curiously.

“Why did you nickname the poor fellow 'Pugwash' of all things?” I asked. He blushed again.

“The English newspaper back there had a cartoon about a hapless pirate called that”, he said. “Major Sholto had lost the sight in one eye and wore an eye-patch, and there was something of the pirate about him for all he was so kind. You know how rough the Army can get at times yet I never found a single man with a bad word to say about him. I am only sorry that when he retired he went to live in France with one of his daughters; I should have liked to have visited him although we still exchange letters.”

“Perhaps he recommended this relative of his”, I said. “Let us have him up and see.”

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I quite took to Captain Quentin Sholto, a handsome and athletic fellow in his late thirties who indeed turned out to be a nephew of John's former commanding officer. Even in his civilian clothes the captain was clearly of military stock and he thanked us for seeing him even before he sat down.

“I wired my uncle down in Bordeaux”, he said, “and he said that it was all right to approach you, sir. I am assigned to the college at Sandhurst now so I am close to the centre of civilization as they call it.”

I could feel John tense at that name. Sandhurst was the station where the Sigurdsons, the criminals in our Thor Bridge case, had embarked only to be intercepted by us at Tonbridge where my foolhardiness had nearly cost me my life. The connection brought back painful memories for us both.

“An estimable institution”, I covered. “Pray tell us what brings you here today.”

The soldier settled himself and began.

“Before Sandhurst, I like my uncle did a stint in Egypt”, he said. “Hot as hell but I suppose that I was lucky in one way; I was stationed in Alexandria far away from the Mahdi and his insane hordes, although they were on the wane then. I came back at the start of the year when I got the college gig, largely through my uncle's help.”

“I had a batman back in Egypt, a young lieutenant called Zouch Tate. Weird, though apparently it's a family name. Not the most communicative of fellows and ugly as sin, but he's sound as a bell.”

I looked inquiringly at someone who may very occasionally have glanced at the social pages of the 'Times' in passing on the rare occasions when he happened to have had a spare minute or two and if the newspaper happened to have been left open at that page. He scowled at me – I did not think that I had smirked _that_ much – but duly answered.

“Zouch Tate was a member of parliament during the English Civil War”, he said, still pouting far too adorably for this hour of a morning. “He was famous for moving the Self-denying Ordinance‡ that debarred members of parliament from holding posts in the Army. It helped Parliament win the war, at least until they messed around with the Army and lost it again.”

“He did say that his family went way back”, Captain Sholto said, clearly impressed. “You see, the college has its own people for those who work there so I wasn't allowed to bring him along. Luckily they had a couple of important visitors and I wanted to see my man right, so I recommended him to be batman to the senior one of them. They had to do some checks of course but they accepted him, and I told him that if the Army could not find him something else when the visitors had gone then I would.”

“Who were these visitors?” I asked.

“Two men from distant Japan”, he said. Their names are Riichi and Ikko Honda – no relation; it's a common name out there I was told – and they were there as part of ongoing ties between our two nations. As you know the Japs were less than happy that our fellow Europeans forced them back a bit the last time they knocked seven bells out of China, especially when the Russians bagged Port Arthur out of it, but the British government feels we need our fellow islanders on side as our Navy is stretched thin enough as it is, especially with ships getting ever more expensive and therefore fewer in number by the year. The word is that there will be a formal alliance pretty soon.”

“Have you spoken with your friend about these gentlemen?” I asked. The captain frowned.

“That's the problem”, he said. “They're here for different purposes even though they are both staying at the college. Ricky – that's what everyone calls him – is a captain in their army while Ike is a diplomat attached to the Japanese embassy for his compatriot's stay here.”

“The two gentlemen are not friends?” John asked. I too had wondered at the use of the rather clumsy 'compatriots'.

The captain seemed to hesitate over that.

“Tate thinks not”, he said. “For all that he himself has the social skills of a parsnip, he's an observant little sod. They're polite to each other in public but he thinks that they don't really like each other. A bit too formal, he says.”

“So now we approach the meat of the problem”, I said. “What has your former batman seen or heard that concerns him and brings you to seek our assistance?”

“I feel like I'm telling tales out of school”, the captain sighed, “but it concerns a fellow captain there, one Captain Lewis Brandon. Like me he's an instructor but he has a very poor reputation; the men – who rarely complain, I might add – have said to me off the record that they don't think much of him. He's also very vocal in his dislike of the Japanese in general and our two guests in particular.”

“I am surprised that the college's authorities allow him to voice such opinions”, John said.

“He's always careful to only ever sound off to those not above him in rank”, the captain said. “Also quite credible; I'm sure that if anyone did report him he would still somehow come out of it smelling of roses. I must admit that I don't like the fellow myself, although that may be partly because of his appearance. I feel anyone who twirls a waxed moustache while talking to you is automatically a blackguard!”

I smiled at that.

“There's also something else”, the captain said, looking worried again. “I don't understand foreign cultures so it may be that I'm misreading it completely, but Tate told me that Ricky is something special back home. He has some sort of favoured status that is like the emperor giving him a gold star or some such nonsense. Tate didn't think much of it when he first heard of it, until one of his fellow batmen told him that Brandon had been overheard saying that what could be given could just as easily be taken away.”

“So you think that he is planning to do something to this 'Ricky' to give him a bad name?” John asked. “That does not sound much.”

“On the contrary”, I said. “In Japanese culture, honour is everything. We could well be talking about a case of murder.”

Both of them looked at me in surprise.

 _“Murder?”_ the captain asked.

“If a gentlemen over there is socially disgraced, then it is accepted that he may remedy matters by taking his own life”, I said. “Ritual suicide, or _seppuku_ as they call it in their language, otherwise the shame would extend to their close kin. If someone does force Mr. Riichi Honda into a corner by disgracing him in public, it would be as effective a means of killing the fellow as sticking the sword in themselves!”

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The case had suddenly assumed a rather greater degree of importance, and we decided that we would go with Captain Sholto to Sandhurst immediately. Hence we left for the Great Western Railway which, although a longer route than via Guildford, meant nearby Paddington instead of distant Waterloo and the chance of a faster train to start with. We were fortunate to catch one which stopped only once before Berkshire's county town, and we were soon in Sandhurst itself. I could see that memories of my own foolishness in the Thor Bridge case which had begun its conclusion from this station were troubling John, but first things first.

“What do you plan to do?” Captain Sholto asked.

“Let us assume that your fellow captain is indeed planning something”, I said. “Is there any chance of his being aware you have sought my help in this matter?”

The soldier shook his head.

“I said that I was going up to London for a clothes fitting and a visit to my bank”, he said. “I have never mentioned Uncle's connection to you, doctor. Tate knows because he's a nosy bastard and it's impossible to keep anything from him, but he would never tell.”

“Then we have an initial advantage”, I said. “We must exploit it for all it is worth, as it is our only one.

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“I sent Miss St. Leger a telegram”, I said to John as we checked into a small hotel in the village, “and I am hopeful that she can come through for us once more and find a key person in this case. It would certainly make things interesting and I quite wish that I had more time to give her. But I fear that the attacker may choose to pile on the pressure against their target to the point that he breaks – a coldly effective means of murder that would be virtually unprovable."

"So?" he asked.

"I instructed Captain Sholto when I saw him off to wait until dinner this evening and then tell his friend Lieutenant Tate that he should alert his fellow batmen to my being called in for some matter concerning the barracks", I said. "Assuming that the college is as prone to gossip as any similar place then the news should reach the ears of the potential murderer soon enough, most likely by nightfall. Especially when Lieutenant Tate tells all the staff that he was sworn to secrecy over it."

He smiled at that. Like me he appreciated that the best way to ensure something became widely known was to attempt to suppress it, something that virtually all the large organizations we had encountered in our time had somehow failed to grasp. The stupidity of those at the top was both saddening and predictable, but for once quite useful.

"If Miss St. Leger can find the fellow that I am after and let me know, then it strengthens our hand", I said, smiling at the pout that was forming when he realized I was not going to divulge all. I only hope that we can prevent this curious affair from ending in death."

As it turned out, we were not destined to achieve that.

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Once again I had underestimated the efficient Miss St. Leger. On receiving her reply we hurriedly finished an insipid dinner and left for the college as fast as we could go. Captain Sholto had instructed the guard to expect us and we were admitted onto the grounds. If Lieutenant Tate was doing his work thoroughly then news of our involvement would be reaching the ears of a killer soon enough, if it had not done so already. 

Mr. Riichi Honda had finished his dinner and was in his room with his fellow countryman. The former was a pleasant young fellow in his early-twenties, his only mistake in life being an unfortunate over-usage of hair gel as his jet-black hair gleamed in the light. Although of a similar age Mr. Ikko Honda looked nothing like his namesake, a sallow-faced brown-haired fellow who looked at us as if we were something that the cat had dragged in despite having been told very firmly to leave it outside. 

"How may we help you, gentlemen?" Mr. Riichi Honda asked courteously.

"I am afraid that we bring rather serious news", I said. I looked at the others and hesitated before continuing. "I think that you would rather have the conversation that we are about to have in private."

"I trust both Quentin and Ike", Mr. Riichi Honda said firmly. “What is the problem?"

I took a deep breath.

"A short time ago, one Private Wilbur Webber was arrested by military police on these grounds", I said. "He is currently awaiting questioning on a serious matter, the authorities having discovered that his actions were not just morally questionable but most likely illegal."

Mr. Riichi Honda was a diplomat as well as a soldier, but even he could not hide his emotions.

"Should I know that name?" he asked.

"What is it?" Mr. Ikko Honda asked. "Who is this person?"

"Most young gentlemen commit at least one minor indiscretion in their lives", I said carefully, feeling sorry for the poor fellow before me. "Yours, sir, was succumbing to the charms of strong drink and an attractive young man who, you could not know, was also a soldier here."

"You had sex with a _man?_ Mr. Ikko Honda exclaimed in disgust, staring incredulously at his colleague. "Riichi! How could you? Your family will never live this down!"

His compatriot hung his head in shame.

"I wish that that was the worst of it", I said, "but sadly it is not. This 'Wilbur' claims that he was instructed to approach you at the request of someone else, quite probably someone on this base, in order to blackmail you. We do not have the fellow's name yet but hopefully he will reveal it in time. Or the truth will emerge some other way."

"This is disgusting!" Mr. Ikko Honda stormed. "I..... no, this is too much!"

He stormed from the room. The atmosphere was horrible.

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Some short time after we had made our arrangements for the night. John was visibly nervous.

"We are all armed", I said reassuringly, "and he will not risk bringing a gun even if he could deaden the noise. He will have to use other means, and we will have him."

"I do not like it", John sighed. "But I suppose we have to."

We took up our positions and waited. I had been right; we did not have a long wait. Barely ten minutes after lights out the door to Mr. Riichi Honda's room was slowly eased open and a figure appeared, barely visible in the dim moonlight through the window. He got only one step into the room before Captain Sholto turned the light on.

It was Mr. Ikko Honda.

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Mr. Riichi Honda sat up in bed and stared bewilderedly at his fellow countryman.

"Why?" he asked. "What did I ever do to you?"

His compatriot looked at him with murderous hatred in his eyes. I had seen many killers in my time but even I shuddered at that look. This was a man who had willingly and gladly surrendered himself to evil.

"You were always the favoured one!” he snarled. "You had it so easy, all the way through your comfortable life. I had more experience and better scores than you, but they still promoted you and made me your contact, a mere lackey. You _deserved_ to die!"

"If he had got that needle into you, die you would have done", I said. "A suicide would have been faked and in the morning everyone would have thought that the scandal had been too much for you such that you had taken your own life. Any investigation would have been perfunctory given the diplomatic tensions just now."

The assailant glared at me too. Captain Sholto had wrestled the syringe away from him which was good as I had feared that he might have used it on himself given the opportunity. A coward's way out for a coward.

"What will you do to me?" the villain demanded.

"We are not such barbarians as you clearly think", I said coolly. "There is also your own family back home to consider as we know your nation would, however unfairly, turn against them for your own vile actions. Listen to me carefully, sir. You will now return to your room; please be aware that that all your guns have been removed but your sword has not. Furthermore all the exits are double guarded with armed men, and they have been instructed to shoot at once if they see you attempting to leave your room again. In five minutes we will follow you there. What happens between now and then is up to you.

He looked hard at me, then nodded.

"My family thanks you", he said stiffly. He bowed and left.

"Do you think he will.... you know?" Captain Sholto asked.

"I hope so", I said. "He is, if he stops to think about it, in a rather stronger position than he might realize just now. He could easily threaten to blurt this whole sorry saga to the newspapers through a lawyer and then demand his life as a price for his silence. But I think that he will do the right thing at the last."

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He did.

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The following day there were not surprisingly more than a few questions to answer, as the Japanese Embassy was rather keen to learn why one of its nation's subjects had committed ritual suicide on a British military barracks. Fortunately I was able to convey enough about his activities without endangering Mr. Riichi Honda, whom we visited before we left. He still looked shocked by what had happened, and his batman was showing considerable patience as he tried get him dressed for some formal occasion or other.

"What about this soldier?" Mr. Honda fretted.

"It has been made clear to him that if he does mention this matter to anyone then being cashiered will be the least of his problems", I said. "He will be looking at considerable gaol time, and worse, in a military gaol where they do not take kindly to people who practice blackmail on any fellow soldier no matter what his nationality. He will not talk. But perhaps if you do this again, you might consider using a shade more discretion and preferably not when under the influence of alcohol."

"It is not as if there is a handbook to that sort of thing", the Japanese said pointedly.

Lieutenant Tate snorted. I found it hard to believe that he was a soldier of any sort; he was short, stubby and looked like he would have struggled to come last in a beauty contest.

"Use Mr. Godfreyson's places in London", he said shortly.

We all looked at him.

 _"You_ know Sweyn?" I asked, more than a little surprised.

"Of course!" he said. "Most discreet fellow there is. Pays well for a couple of week's work."

We continued to stare at him.

"What?" he asked.

"You mean that when you go to London... you....." Mr. Honda began. _"You?"_

Lieutenant Tate grinned, seemingly not offended by his master's bluntness. Not that we were all not thinking exactly the same.

"Grandad was from Florence", he said. "What they say about Italian men is true, at least for me. I'm almost fully booked up for my next stint."

"I think that we had better leave you", I smiled. "It seems that the answer to your problems was staring you in the face all along, Mr. Honda."

"Not in the face", Lieutenant Tate grinned. "I've seen him in the bath, remember. Sweyn would take him on any day!"

I had not known that anyone could turn _that_ red!

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We returned to our hotel and packed for our departure. John was still more silent than usual and I could guess why.

“This place still brings back bad memories”, I observed as we watched a train approaching from the south. He sighed.

“It is stupid of me, I know”, he said. “I cannot blame one village for a group of criminals choosing its station to start a journey.”

“I am sure that we can do something about that”, I said confidently. “We need to cross to the other platform.”

He looked at me curiously.

“We are not going back via Reading?” he asked.

“I thought we would follow the route the Sigurdsons took”, I said, “all the way to Tonbridge. Then we can change for Victoria.”

“Why?” he asked following me onto the footbridge.

“Because the nice slow journey on a non-corridor train will give you plenty of time to remove the pink panties that I am wearing.”

I briefly lowered my belt. He promptly stumbled on the stairs.

“Trying to kill me!” he growled as he hurried to catch up.

“We shall see”, I said. “I know how you _older_ men do not always have the stamina, so I shall understand if you are not 'up' to it.”

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He was 'up' to it. Three times!

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_Notes:_   
_† The Japanese would later claim that their war against China did not actually start until 1937, since that huge country had fallen apart in the early twentieth century and the Japanese 'only' invaded Manchuria, a semi-detached area with a different culture. The polite word for this is 'semantics'; a more direct one is 'lying'._   
_‡ An example of low cunning from someone who was almost certainly not Zouch Tate (1606-1650); he was named for his grandfather Edward, Baron Zouch's title. The deed was far more likely the work of young Sir Harry Vane, the Randall Holmes of his day (yes, that bad!). After the Battle of Cheriton in March 1644 victory had seemed within the grasp of the Commons only for their inept leaders to not only throw it all away but lose two major battles (Cropredy Bridge and Lostwithiel) and fail to win a third (Second Newbury) despite having a two to one advantage in numbers. The House of Commons offered the Lords what seemed like the chance to remove Oliver Cromwell (highly effective but hated by the Upper Chamber for being too common) along with ineffectual Lords leaders like the Earl of Manchester and the Earl of Essex (could not find their way out of a paper bag even with a map). The catch, which the Lords did not spot until too late, was that members of the Commons had the option of resigning their seats and so keeping their Army places, an option not then open to the Lords. Politics then was as devious, underhand and scheming as it is now!_

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	8. Case 319: The Adventure Of The Berwickshire Terrier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Having recovered from seeing rather too much of his big brother, Stephen Watson asks for help on a second case where the lawyer has to defend a man accused of killing his wife. Sherlock assists – well, sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the death of Mrs. Stewart of Lauder.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was October, some five months after my brother Stevie had called on Sherlock's talents in the Farridge blackmail case, and also five months after his unannounced visit to Baker Street had resulted in his seeing perhaps a little more of his big brother than he might have wished for and subsequently setting a world record for the sprint back to Baker Street tube station! The giraffe could, I knew from experience, sulk for an impressively long time – he had still not fully forgiven me for The Doughnut Debacle when we were both children – but as events transpired he now needed our (Sherlock's) help in a rather unusual murder that had taken place in the border county of Berwickshire, a case in which he had been appointed to represent the accused man.

I am probably being biased with my late mother hailing from Berwickshire's neighbour Roxburghshire, but I often felt that the Victorian _hoi polloi_ who travelled to and from the Highlands every year were missing a lot of far more accessible yet equally beautiful (and also slightly less freezing!) countryside. Indeed, had it not been for the cold climes of the Borders I might well have considered them as a possible future retirement option. We had of course not long returned from Dumfries-shire and Galloway (and our wonderful Gretna Green experience), at the western end of the Scottish March, and now we were headed to the eastern end.

Berwickshire is of course most famous for the fact that many years after it had been created out of lands seized from the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria, the latter's successor state of England took back the port for which it had been named for the seventh and last time (1482), leaving Berwickshire without a Berwick. For most people the county was probably just an obstacle that delayed them getting to their freezing Highlands but there was a lot more to the county than just the North British Railway Company's main line along its barren and almost empty coastline, and this case took us to a quiet little place in the west of the county, the town of Lauder.

It is curious that I wrote up this story (although not for publication) at the time and am now adding it to the Sherlock canon some three decades later (1936). Three and a half decades ago railways seemed to have become a permanent part of the landscape and the opening of the line to Lauder some months before these events occurred had been widely celebrated. Yet even before it had been built there had been some saying that a road would have been a better option, and the subsequent Great War would show the greater flexibility of motorized transport. Four years ago and after barely three decades of existence the railway to Lauder was closed to passengers, people much preferring to use the 'bus which although slower did not necessitate a change and ran right to the centre of the town. Goods traffic is still carried on the line but I am sure that once the roads improve and lorries become larger, that too will end and the Lauder Railway will be but a memory. It is sad but I suppose that that is what they call progress.

I mention the railway because it was an important factor in this case, with its train taking its nickname from a local breed of dog, the hardy Berwickshire Terrier. Although nominally a private line it had been worked from the start by the North British Railway, with whose metals it connected at Fountainhall Junction on that Company's Carlisle to Edinburgh ('Waverley') line. That Company had been far from pleased with what it had found in its first few weeks of operations and had demanded several improvements be made immediately else it would pull out. Among its list of demands was better lighting for the approach to the terminus which had been built about a mile from the town that it purported to serve (although in fairness to the railway companies it might be added that many of these stations were sited at a time when there was no alternative transport options available). 

In what had proved to be a somewhat unfortunate choice of both words and timing, a railway official had then quipped to a local journalist that potential passengers might find all manner of strange things along that unlit road. A mere two weeks after he had said that, Mr. James Stewart of Lauder did indeed find a strange thing along said unlit road. To wit, his wife's dead body.

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We had taken the overnight sleeper to Edinburgh and Stevie had met us on the station platform, shaking his leonine locks at the very obvious fact that neither of us had gotten much sleep. Well, obvious in my case; clearly the North British Railway's guardian angel had been watching over them and they had had the foresight to have provided coffee so that 'someone' was fresh as the morning dew. Life was unfair like that.

I may have exaggerated my limp just a bit to annoy my little brother, and let out the occasional uncalled for manly expression of pain. Poor Stevie did not have a good morning as we called briefly in on Hetty in order to see young Stephen for the first time, and she made her husband turn bright red by asking loudly if we were going to start 'doing it' in her living-room'. Which may possibly have explained why, before we returned to Waverley Station, my brother told us that he had booked us into a local hotel for our stay 'because he had so little room'. 

“Also no ear-plugs!” some sadistic and inventive blue-eyed person muttered far too loudly. I had not known that my little brother could turn that shade of red!

Having come four hundred miles north we now journeyed some twenty-five miles back south as far as Fountainhall Junction, another interchange pretty much in the middle of nowhere where we changed there to a rather questionable branch-line train that managed to hold together long enough to traverse the ten miles to Lauder. The countryside was like around the Junction very empty, and I remember wondering if the branch would as its planners had hoped be pushed on to connect with the railway system again further south. There did not seem to be many other passengers, either.

“So why do they suspect the husband?” I asked as we walked out of the station. It was as I said some little distance from the town but Sherlock had wished to see the exact place where the body had been found.

“He was one of the two gentlemen who found her”, Stevie said. “Plus he is the beneficiary of a substantial life-insurance policy, on which the company is understandably disinclined to pay out on while the potential recipient might well stand trail for murder.”

We quitted the station and headed up a frankly unwelcoming approach road to what must have served as a 'main road' in these parts. There was a gateway to some large private property a little way down on the left, a single cottage slightly closer on the right and a large castle overlooking the distant town.

“Where do Mr. and Mrs. Stewart live?” Sherlock asked. 

“That is one of the strange aspects of the case”, Stevie said. “She chanced to meet an acquaintance of hers off the train when changing at the junction, a Mrs. Fields, but when they reached here she declined to share that lady's cab. She claimed that she needed some fresh air, which seems odd. The night was pleasant enough; a light mist but no rain and Mrs. Fields lived on the south side of the town not that far from her friend. Mrs. Stuart would have saved herself three-quarters of her walk at least and still have had a decent walk.”

Sherlock smiled knowingly.

"I think that I can see why she might have needed a longer walk coming back from her day away", he said. “Where did she go by the way? Edinburgh?”

“Yes", Stevie said. "A day out shopping, she told her friend. She did not have much shopping with her, but that was another thing I considered strange as she had to carry her bag right across the town.”

“What items were found in her possession at the time of death?”

“Apart from her handbag which contained nothing of note, just the items that she purchased in Edinburgh”, Stevie said. “The police did check and the receipts all tallied up. The only thing that I thought slightly strange was that she purchased a bag of dog biscuits.”

“Does she not have a dog?” I asked.

“Mr. Stewart owns Hotspur, a Berwickshire Terrier”, my brother said. “I did ask him if the dog was a fussy eater or something but he said that no, the animal will eat just about anything. I wondered; why did she buy dog biscuits in _Edinburgh_ then carry them all the way home and on that long walk, when there must surely be somewhere in the town that sells them? It was a medium-sized bag and not any special brand, which with the few other items again makes me wonder why she did not accept her friend's offer. Also as I said the dog is her husband's; she was not particularly enamoured of it from what he said. Here, this is where they found the body.”

We were still some little distance from the cottage and a handily-placed tree leaned across the road and blocked our view of it at this point. The road did have some lamp-post bases but the upper parts had not been fitted. The perfect place to commit a crime.

“Do you still have the items that the late Mrs. Stewart was carrying?” Sherlock asked after a brief examination of the area.

“They are being held at Lauder police-station until the case is resolved”, Stevie said, seemingly nonplussed at my friend's interest in the victim's shopping purchases. 

“You said that Mr. Stewart is currently being held in Greenlaw?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes. That is about the same size as Lauder. This place only has two cells and unluckily both were occupied when he was arrested.”

 _A veritable hotbed of crime_ , I thought.

“Have you a key to his house?” Sherlock asked, shaking his head at me for some reason.

“I have.”

“Then let us go there.”

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'Bide-A-Wee Cottage' (look, I was _allowed_ an eye-roll at that!) stood slightly apart at the southern end of the town with only one other house beyond it.

“That last one is Mr. Gardiner's cottage, 'Pleasantview'”, Stevie said. “Mr. Stuart is but a small man and was nervous about going out in the dark, even if it was to search for a wife who was not yet back."

"Was Mrs. Stewart ever late back?" Sherlock asked. 

My brother shook his head.

"Never”, he said firmly. “She was very keen on punctuality; I got the impression that her husband was less so and that it may have been another source of friction between them along with the dog. Back to the night; Mr. Gardiner who is younger and much more muscular accompanied him to the local police-station and they arranged a search party, starting with the obvious route to the railway-station. The two were together when they found Mrs. Stewart; Mr. Gardiner reached the body first.”

“Do you know if Mrs. Stewart missed her train back from Edinburgh?” Sherlock asked.

“No”, Stevie said, clearly surprised at the question. “The branch-line trains are infrequent but there is a guaranteed connection at Fountainhall. Why do you ask?”

“It seems odd that she only got so far into her journey before she met her end”, Sherlock said. “You said that Mr. Stewart set out in search for her and was able to cross the town in the time it took her to get only this short distance from the station. Therefore either she missed her train at Edinburgh, or she was killed elsewhere and the body was later moved.”

Stevie looked at him in surprise.

“Mrs. Fields did mention that she knew Mrs. Stewart went to Edinburgh from time to time”, he said warily, “and usually caught an earlier train than the one she met her on. She was on that train herself the one time.”

“So Mrs. Stewart did not therefore expect to be on the same train as her friend”, Sherlock said crisply. “You mentioned that the cause of death was poison. How had it been administered?”

“Very cunningly”, Stevie said, “which makes me even less inclined to suspect someone like Mr. Stewart. I know that I should not speak ill of the dead but I have no doubt that his late wife wore the trousers in their house!"

For some reason he looked at me as he said that. I stared at him suspiciously; that innocent smile did not ring true for one minute. And Sherlock was doing that damnable not-smirk of his for some reason. Harrumph!

"She had her own hip-flask of whisky – a very strong brand – and the poison had been added to that", went on a little brother that I no longer liked one little bit. "She must have stopped on the way home for a drink and alas! it was her last.”

“Do you have the test results?” Sherlock asked with that looked dangerously close to a smirk for someone who wanted extra bacon at breakfast any time soon. 

“All in the files I have with me”, Stevie said. “What do you hope to find?”

“I do not yet know”, Sherlock said. “Let us see what there is to find.”

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Despite its terrible name the cottage was I thought decidedly ordinary. The one thing that struck me was that it was very clearly demarcated into 'husband' and 'wife' zones. I could picture the poor browbeaten husband having been totally whipped, obeying his wife's every order and command, utterly under her thumb in every.....

_'Someone' was not-smirking again!_

“Where is the dog now?” asked some blue-eyed bastard whom I barely knew.

“Mr. Gardiner is caring for him”, Stevie said. “The Stewarts have no relations in the area; Mr. Stewart is an only child and she has one sister somewhere down in the West Country. Mrs. Stewart may have had a cousin somewhere in Scotland – Mr. Gardiner remembered Mr. Stewart mentioning one once – but we found no address for them in her book so presumably they do not talk.”

Sherlock looked curiously at the large fireside chair and the table next to it.

“Mr. Stewart smoked Old Navy tobacco”, he frowned. “That is quite a potent mixture and not at all common. Is he retired from the service?”

“Hardly!” Stevie smiled. “They are both about forty years of age; he works as an insurance agent in the town.”

 _So he would know to insure his wife's life before dispatching her_ , I thought. _Convenient._

“Was the insurance policy the usual reciprocal one?” Sherlock asked, smiling at me for some reason.

My brother looked momentarily confused before he got it.

“Yes, his life was insured for the same amount and she was the beneficiary”, he said. “But she is the one who is dead.”

Sherlock seemed particularly interested in a bottle of whisky that was in the kitchen, opening it and sniffing it before closing it again. I noted only that it was one of the cheaper ones on sale before he said that he was done and that we should repair to the police-station.

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Constable Michael Duggan was clearly wary of us as being 'foreign' but we were allowed to examine the evidence that had come out of the victim's shopping-bag. We did so in a small side-room and to my surprise Sherlock filled three of the small envelopes he kept about his person with samples from it. One was a single dog-biscuit, which even I found odd. Finally however we were done and we walked back to the station to catch the last train to Fountainhall.

“Do you think that Mr. Stewart can be saved?” Stevie asked as we sat in the waiting-room.

Sherlock thought for a moment.

“What you are asking is, will the prosecution be able to secure a murder conviction against him?”

I was wary at once. I knew Sherlock too well not to see when he was not saying something, even when he was not saying.... I knew what I meant and that had better not be another damn smirk!

“Well, yes”, my brother said.

“They will not.”

“Did Mr. Stewart kill his wife?” I challenged.

“Yes.”

We both stared at him in shock.

“Then he _is_ guilty of murder!” Stevie said.

“He is, but a jury would never convict”, Sherlock said firmly. “You said that Mr. and Mrs. Stewart moved here from Edinburgh about two years ago?”

“Yes?”

“Then the case is finished.”

 _“Do_ explain to us lesser mortals”, I said, in a manner that was not at all snarky. He gave me a look that said that we would be discussing that not at all snarky tone later (I may have coincidentally shivered at how cold this room was at precisely that moment in time), but began.

“The idyllic life in the country is an aspiration to so many people”, he said eyeing me heavily, “and Victorian painters have a lot to answer for in portraying it as such. In reality Mrs. Stewart in particular became bored of her rural 'idyll'. She became bored of her husband. And when said husband acquired a Berwickshire Terrier, a dog which like its Highland cousin shed all over her nice clean house, she became annoyed.”

“Matters might have rested there – many marriages survive on less – but it was fated not to be. On one of her increasingly frequent shopping trips to Edinburgh, Mrs. Stewart made the acquaintance of a gentleman friend.”

“How do you know that?” Stevie asked.

“Her shopping-bag.”

My brother stared at him in confusion.

“I saw nothing in it that suggested any such thing”, he said.

“Not so much the _contents_ as the bag itself”, Sherlock explained. “It is of that fine weave which although it is long-lasting traps tiny particles in it. Two things of note interested me about that bag. First, there were small fragments of tobacco. A cheap and popular brand, yet in the cottage we found that Mr. Stewart smoked something very different. No man smokes more than one type, so evidently she was seeing someone else.”

“She might have picked that up anywhere”, I said dubiously.

“True”, he admitted, “but the second substance was more damning. Cat hair. It was only in very small amounts, but I am sure that a scientific analysis will show it to have been from a Persian cat which is not a common breed outside of private houses. We were told that Mrs. Stewart went shopping, so why would she visit a private house?”

“Maybe the cousin lives in Edinburgh?” I suggested.

“I rather think that 'the cousin' translates as 'the lover'”, Sherlock said crisply. “Her actions on returning home were also damning.”

“What actions?” Stevie asked.

“First, she refused her friend's offer of a cab on a frankly pathetic excuse”, Sherlock said. 

“Why did she walk all that way?” I asked. “I mean, the only reason....”

I suddenly went pale. Working with I did in Mr. Godfreyson's molly-houses I knew why both molly-men and clients walked home after..... ugh!

Sherlock nodded at me.

“As we both know from certain acquaintances of ours, human coupling involves the transfer of a large degree of scent”, he said. “True, she had a long railway journey back but there was always the danger that her husband might have detected another man's scent on her; a man who uses a scent himself is much more likely to spot another man's scent or even his cologne. A long walk home would rid herself of that problem; a short one after a cab ride might well not have done, let alone that she would have been sat next to her friend in that cab and she too might have detected it.”

“We shall never find the man involved”, Stevie sighed.

“You might start by looking at the university”, Sherlock said. “I do not know the exact poison used but one of the chemicals that I do recognize is exceedingly rare. The man involved in this case works at or is a student there and is almost certainly a scientist, although there is now no way of knowing just how involved he was in what was about to happen. So to continue. Mrs. Stewart is content to relieve her boredom thus – but it is truly said that your sins will find you out. Her husband discovered her secret.

“How?” I wondered.

“Hotspur told him.”

Now he was just pulling our legs. Except that his gaze remained unwavering.

“The Berwickshire Terrier is a strong breed”, he explained, “but it is still susceptible to some things. There is a treatment for cats which involves a mild toxin and, in cats as in humans, any toxin is expelled via the hair. Hotspur must have got into Mrs. Stewart's bag upon her return one day, maybe looking to get at the dog-biscuits, and his body reacted to the toxins in the cat hair. I would hazard that Mr. Stewart took him to the vet who advised that the animal must have got it from a cat. Mr. Stewart did not take his dog out except for walks on a lead so he was able to work out as I did that his wife was spending some time at a private house where there was a cat, and all that that implied. I am sure that if you made further inquiries you would find that he followed her to Edinburgh and to his rival's house one day to make sure, upon which her doom was sealed.”

“The cuckolded husband planned his revenge with great care. First, he and his wife take out large life-insurance policies on each other. He knows his target, and that she will believe that this offers her an excellent chance to dispose of an unwanted husband and to then marry her lover, pocketing the insurance money as a nice bonus. Except that she will be removed from this earth first and in a way that can never be subjected to the laws of the land.”

“One of the clues that was missed from the lady's possessions was the hip-flask. Doubtless the police were congratulating themselves on having spotted the poison in it, and had they pressed matters further I am sure that they would have found that there was a book on poisons from the local library at the house. It would however later emerge that it had been _Mrs._ Stewart who had borrowed the book.”

“Mr. Stewart knows the Scottish judicial system in that he can all but destroy any prosecution against him if it emerges that his wife was planning to kill him, then he found out and struck first 'in self-defence'. So he pushes matters, increasing the divide between them. Sure enough his wife decides that she will rid herself not only of the husband but of his irksome pet as well. If you test the dog-biscuit in this envelope I think that you will find that it is dosed with enough poison to kill the poor animal. That was why she bought so few of the things.”

I winced. I knew that poisoning an animal is a far lesser crime, but to take one's anger out on a defenceless dog – it seemed just wrong.

“She knows that her husband takes whisky every day so, on a day that she is with her lover in Edinburgh, she doses his whisky with poison”, Sherlock said. “But while she is making preparations for her departure her husband takes advantage to do the same to her. A deadly poison is added to her own hip-flask. Of course there was no liquid but I did find some dregs in the bottom of it, and should you have those tested I do not doubt what you will find.”

“Finally there is the time factor. We know that Mrs. Stewart was due back by an earlier train, and that she missed it and caught a later one, which we are told that she almost never did. When one considers the timings we know that he must have been with Mr. Gardiner at the police-station arranging the search at about the same time that his wife was pausing in her walk home to take her fatal drink of whisky. Since she would obviously have wished for the discovery of what she assumed would be his dead body to have been made by someone else, it is likely that she sent a telegram from Edinburgh ostensibly to alert her husband of her delay, so that the unlucky messenger might make the discovery. You may be able to find such a telegram, in which case his setting out to find her body at that time would seem strange.”

I could see now what Sherlock had meant about a jury being unwilling to convict a man for the murder of a wife who had been planning to murder him. England or Scotland, no twelve good men and true would ever do such a thing. Yet the man had indubitably killed his wife.

“What can we do about it?” Stevie fretted.

“Very little, I am afraid”, Sherlock said sadly. “The insurance company will not of course pay out, although I doubt that Mr. Stewart will care about that. Their role was to precipitate his wife into her own attempt at murder, and at the coast of a few premiums they have served their purpose. No, your best bet would be to meet with the man's defence counsel and settle for a conviction on a lesser crime. I think that a jury might be prepared to convict on that, provided that they were assured that there was no danger of the death penalty.”

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Sherlock was to be proven right as usual. The man's defence counsel agreed for him to plead guilty to attempted murder and a judge, quite leniently in my opinion, sentenced the villain to only three years in gaol. Evidently a higher power disagreed with that decision for less than six months into his sentence Mr. Stewart contracted a fever and died long before he could breathe free air again.

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My love and I spent a most pleasant week in the capital and I enjoyed spending time with Stevie and his family, being the indulgent uncle to his children. As did Sherlock; when young Jack called him 'Uncle Sherlock' one time his little face lit up and I honestly thought that he was going to cry.

On a more horizontal note I had to cope with withering looks from my little brother as what was left of me staggered into his house every day. Look, I had not known that Sherlock had brought The Kilt up with him and his insisting in wearing it every evening and morning at the hotel meant that I simply had to ravish him or I would not have been doing my job as a good... mate. My only bad moment was the last evening when we attended an official function with Stevie and, just before we sat down to eat, Sherlock whispered to me that he was wearing nothing underneath The Kilt. Unfortunately Stevie overheard him; he refused to speak to us both for the rest of the evening and was still scowling as he saw us off at Waverley Station the next day. He doubtless was glad to see the back of us, thinking that his life could finally get back to normal.

Ah.

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There was a telegram waiting for us when we arrived back at Baker Street. Apparently one of the maids at the hotel where we had been staying had found a certain underwear item – a blue, lacy underwear item with a white saltire on it – under one of our beds and, showing commendable discretion, had wrapped it up and passed it on to the hotel manager merely saying that it was 'an item of clothing'. He, knowing that I was the brother of a certain local lawyer, had brought it round to Stevie's house thinking that it could be forwarded to us from there. According to Hetty's telegram the giraffe was still sobbing on the couch after he had gone and opened the parcel – right in front of his son Jack!

And the shocked hotel manager!

And a fellow lawyer from his firm who had just been about to leave!

And their nosy neighbour at number twelve!

I never did get them back! And I think the Certificate of Disinheritance that he sent me through the post was quite uncalled for!

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_Notes:_   
_The Lauder branch closed to goods traffic in 1964. Five years later the main Carlisle-Edinburgh 'Waverley' line down which the three had travelled in the story followed it, leaving a vast area of southern Scotland devoid of railways. In 2015 the northern part of the line (Edinburgh-Galasheils-Tweedbank) reopened and despite being built on a shoestring has been such a success that an extension onto Hawick and Carlisle looks likely, hopefully sometime this century given Notwork Rail's normal 'efficiency'. Fountainhall Junction remains closed but Stow (serving Stow of Wedale, population 720), the next station south and some five miles west of Lauder, has reopened as a railhead for the town and has exceeded all expectations in its passenger numbers. Lauder's population at the time of this story was about 1700, coincidentally about the same as it is today (2020) although like Presteigne from an earlier case the advent of the railway actually led to a steep decline and only better roads bringing it within reach of Edinburgh prompted a recovery._

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	9. Interlude: The Lyon's Den

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. True happiness can sometimes be ephemeral.

_[Narration by Mr. Daniel Hunter, Esquire]_

I am sure they will say that it was my own damn fault, that pride always comes before a fall and all the other old _canards_ that get wheeled out. But I had been so happy lately with my beautiful Carl (I never used that word to him of course as he would have been mortified!), and as my half-brother Ben and I looked down on the two broken forms of our lovers holding each other as they slept after our 'attentions', I had thought that my life could not have been better. My soldier brave loved me a thousand times more than I could possibly deserve and I know that he often decried his own looks, yet those craggy features were more dear to me than any sight on this earth.

My very own master-general's family were a mixed bunch to say the least. I had not met either his sole sister Anna, who I knew was married with a family of her own up and recently moved to Norfolk, or his brother Guilford who was renowned for his practical jokes. He told me that her absence was a loss and his.... was not. Of the remainder I gathered he rated three as even worse; Randall was cold and heartless ('even for a fellow government lackey', Carl had said) while Mycroft and Torver were in various states of disgrace for past misdemeanours and he fervently hoped that they would stay that way. The only one that he had any time for was the wonderful Sherlock who had been instrumental in bringing me into his life, an act of kindness for which I can never repay him. Then there was Sherlock's mysterious twin Sherrinford who was... just strange.

Not forgetting of course Carl's sons, who had all visited me – fully armed! – and told me that if their father took it into his head to take me to his bed and have his way with me, then to their father's bed I had better damn well go. Although it was more often me doing the taking, but I admired them for doing something like that which so very clearly made them uncomfortable, so I did not feel the need to inform them of our 'active manoeuvres'.

Carl's other relative who he definitely was not cuddling just now (I so wished for a camera to catch them when one of them woke up and realized what they were doing!) was another government lackey, his sort-of cousin Lucifer 'Luke' Garrick, Ben's lover after whom my horn-dog of a half-brother had recently named his sixteenth _(sixteenth!)_ child as well as asking him to become the boy's godfather. I say asking; Ben could put out the worst 'woe is me' face that I had ever seen and no man could ever refuse him, as the two cuddle-bunnies currently holding each other might have attested had they been conscious. But as we looked down on the slumbering forms of our beautiful lovers, the only small cloud in the blue skies of my current happiness was the fear that this might be as good as it got.

For me personally it was just about to get very bad, if not nearly terminal. Indeed I was not far away from needing the services of both Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Very much so.

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	10. Case 320: The Adventure Of The Kentish Cobbler ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. A quirk of the local electoral system guarantees the shop-traders of leafy Tunbridge Wells in Kent a voice on the town council, and they have their own elections to choose who will be their spokesman. But when a humble cobbler dares to put himself forward for the post, that is totally beyond the Pale – at least until Sherlock gets involved.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It was only a few days after our return from Berwickshire that our next case presented itself to our door. Presumably John's brother might perhaps have stopped shaking at the somewhat unfortunate 'leaving present' that had been delivered to his house. 

Although after the framed Certificate of Disinheritance that he had sent him, perhaps not.

The young man sat in the famous fireside chair could have featured in the dictionary under that wonderful phrase 'spectacularly unremarkable'. He was about twenty years of age, thin with dark hair and a worried expression. I had seen him dithering outside for at least five minutes so clearly he was nervous and he had accepted a coffee with alacrity, downing it at once with a speed that had surprised both John and I.

“Mr. Mark Cross”, I said. “Apart from the fact that you travelled up from Kent and changed trains, and that you are obviously a cobbler, I know little of your business here. May we know more?”

He looked surprised at my omniscience. But then most people were.

“How did you know that, sir?” he asked. His voice was soft to the point of being almost inaudible.

“Your ticket is clipped by the South Eastern route that terminates at London Bridge or Ludgate Hill”, I said, “as only conductors on that line use the strange V-shaped clippers. However the dust on your coat suggests that you came through Victoria Station which is currently being rebuilt in Portland stone. Since the quality of your shoes as against the rest of your clothes told me that you are a cobbler, you clearly changed trains because Victoria is an easier walking distance from this house.”

“You are right, sir”, he said. “I am worried about my father.”

He stopped. I sighed; this was going to be another of Those Interviews.

“What is wrong with him?” I asked.

“He is wonderful”, the young man said, a shade defensively I felt, “but I fear that he is in for a disappointment.”

I looked at him expectantly.

“You see”, he said, “in Tunbridge there has always been a seat on the local council put by for the tradesmen like my father.”

I tensed involuntarily at the mention of that town, where quite recently my own foolishness had nearly cost me my life. I could see that John was affected too.

“Tonbridge† or Tunbridge Wells‡?” he asked.

“The spa”, the young man said, to my relief. “My father is very popular among many of the tradesmen but those who do what might be called the higher end selling, they do not like him at all. The post has always been held by one of three families, and they.....”

He stopped. I noted that he was wrapping his hands around each other. What was he so worried about? This was only an election.

“These men have been boasting – not to me of course – that one of them, Mr. Birch the ladies' clothier, will win”, he said. “Although he is a wonderful man and I do not like to say it of him, my father is.... fragile. My mother left him some years back and he managed to raise all three of us boys by himself. Most of the tradesmen respect him for that.”

I thought instinctively of our friend Jet, who to the surprise (and joy) of us both had decamped with Mr. Hugh Lancaster back to the latter's native Anglesey. Some men were just made that way, and needed taking good care of.

“You believe that these three men will attempt to rig the vote in some way”, I said. “I do not suppose that you know how the vote is conducted at all?”

“All I know is that the count is always done in the main square”, the young man said. 

“It seems that we must return to the Garden of England, then”, I said. “Sir, you have successfully incited my curiosity. We shall take this case.”

Our visitor was clearly surprised at his success, but smiled in relief.

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The ineffable Miss St. Leger was able to find out all that we needed to know about the curious electoral practices of the newest town in west Kent, and soon we were speeding on our way from Ludgate Hill. The newly merged and yet not merged 'South Eastern & Chatham' was as I have said before showing signs of improvement, even if the newspapers were now lampooning it as having finally reached 'fit for humans to travel on' but still with a long way to go to catch up the other railway companies. A bad reputation is among the most difficult of things to shake off, especially one that has endured (and been well-merited) for the best part of half a century.

“It is a very exclusive electorate”, I told John. “Just forty voters all told. I think that young Mr. Cross was quite right to be suspicious; the three gentlemen he referred to are the sort who as we often say skate around the edges of criminality without falling in.”

“Unless pushed by some consulting detective!” he grinned.

I looked at him and smiled. It probably took him rather too long to get it.

“This is a suburban train!” he protested.

“Like that would stop me!” I snorted. “Trousers off, John.”

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I made sure to finish rocking his world a little way before Tonbridge, partly because I could then open the window and air the compartment of its scent of very satisfied male, and partly because that would give him the few miles on from there to the spa town to recover. There was also the fact that as I said Tonbridge brought bad memories of my foolishness in the Thor Bridge case, although in his current state he was not capable of doing something as complicated as thinking. Thankfully no-one tried the (jammed) door to our compartment at the station – people generally knew what lowered blinds in the middle of the day really meant, thankfully – and we were soon on our way again.

I must say that for some reason I did not take to Tunbridge Wells. It was a small town of the size that I usually preferred and liked, yet there was a snooty atmosphere about many of its denizens that seemed to imply they were in some way better than those elsewhere, several of whom looked at us as if we were not really suitable for _their_ town. It was a relief to reach Mr. Cross's shop where I ordered a pair of new shoes and took the chance to assess our client's father. Mr. Benjamin Cross was about forty years of age, and the word that sprang to mind when seeing him was 'earnest'. I only hoped that he never embarked on a life of crime as he looked far too innocent a person.

I asked if I might borrow his son to point out a few things in the town to me, and was thus able to have a few words with him.

“I have found that the voting takes place in a nearby hall”, I said, “and that the ballot-box is then carried to this area for the public counting. I think that you were right to be suspicious, and that your father's rivals are planning something.”

“Mr. Birch has been saying that he will get the council to 'improve' the roads through the shopping area”, the young man said, looking worried. “I am sure that will do so in such a way as to divert people away from our shop.”

“Mr. Birch has to be elected first”, I said, “and a friend of mine in London says that he is very unpopular except for his two cronies. So as you thought, he will try to cheat. But we will be ready for him.”

He thanked me and I tipped him for show.

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The vote was the very next day, and I knew that once all forty votes had been cast or the clock reached three (whichever came first), the single ballot-box would be carried to the shopping area and counted. The voters were clearly keen for all forty had managed to vote by shortly before one, and the officials sealed the box before taking it away to be counted. John looked at me nervously.

“Relax”, I smiled. “They will not get far.”

Because thanks to the still ineffable Miss St. Leger, I had been able to hire certain useful 'large gentlemen' even in somewhere as rural as this place (all right; they all came from outside the town). Democracy is the best system of government, and as such it would have my full protection against those who would try to abuse it.

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Mr. Birch and his two cronies, Mr. Grinton and Miss Lewis, were all ready at the count and visibly keen to enjoy their victory. So there was something doubly pleasurable to watch their faces run the gamut from self-confidence through doubt and anxiety before reaching incredulity, as the pile of votes for their opponent rose ever higher while their own stayed stubbornly flat. When the final vote was announced – thirty-seven votes to three – they had already slunk off, no doubt to try to find out what had just happened.

“What did you do?” Mr. Mark Cross asked, coming up to us. “I cannot thank you enough; you can see how over the moon my father is, but how did you manage it?

I smiled.

“When those three villains go back to the hall”, I said, “they will of course be seeking out the men in charge of the count. Their plan was that when taking the ballot-box out the back, instead of just taking it to be counted and dealing with that ghastly democracy business, it would be swapped for an identical one in which their candidate had narrowly won. Unfortunately for their men, when they took the box out the back they ran into some gentlemen who I hired, and who were rather large. They were liberated of both the box and their clothing, and the will of the people was allowed to prevail.

“Thank you”, the young man smiled. “You have made Father a happy man, and that is a wonderful thing.”

It rather was.

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Indeed, Mr. Benjamin Cross rapidly established his name on the council as a man of great sense, such that he was re-elected unopposed to the traders' seat year after year and, eventually made history as the first such representative to become mayor of the town. My only reward for all my efforts was a nice train-ride back to London, although John had a nice ride too.

All right, it was a very nice ride!

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_Notes:_   
_† Recorded in the 1087 Domesday Book as Tonebridge, it was Tunbridge until 1870 which was why the nearby spa became Tunbridge Wells. In that year the General Post Office decided that despite being the older down, Tunbridge should change its name to Tonbridge in an effort to avoid confusion._   
_‡ Tunbridge Wells was established in the early seventeenth century but did not become a town until the advent of the railway made its spa a tourist attraction within easy reach of London. It gained its 'Royal' prefix not long after this story is set, courtesy of King Edward the Seventh in 1909, joining Royal Leamington Spa which had been 'ennobled' by his mother in 1838. Today there is a third such town, Royal Wootton Bassett created by Queen Elizabeth the Second in 2011 in honour of the great respect its townspeople showed the coffins of soldiers being brought back to the nearby Carterton Airfield. The much more common suffix 'Regis' means simply that a monarch owned land in the town at some time in the past._

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	11. Case 321: The Adventure Of Burghley House ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Mr. William Thomas Brownlow Cecil, better known as the 5th Marquess of Exeter or by his subsidiary title Lord Burghley, asks for Sherlock's help in a potentially embarrassing matter concerning his most famous ancestor. It is off to the Soke for a sack full of trouble.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I mentioned to John one time that in our many adventures we must surely have visited most corners of this realm at one time or another. He did some research and found that that was only partly true; when it came to cases that we recorded in detail four of the Welsh counties had only featured once each during the Early Hiatus when my own foolishness had forced him apart from me for three painful years, and that time had also seen my only trip to Cromartyshire which had been abolished in 1889. Complicating the matter still further were the Isle of Ely, where I had solved a case while at Cambridge but had not become a county in its own right until some years after, and the other abolished counties one of which, Tarbertshire, I had also visited alone. The other two, Hexhamshire and Winchcombeshire, we had so far not seen although curiously we would visit both the year after next. Finally there were the so-called 'town counties' like 'Hullshire', urban areas which had all the rights of counties but which were seldom called such. It was rather a mess, and very English.

This adventure features part of that mess, as it was our only venture into the Soke of Peterborough, a sort of 'half-county' that was historically part of Northamptonshire but very much ran its own affairs. As its name suggests it is centred on the important railway junction at Peterborough but our adventure lay at its western extremity, and concerned one of the most famous names from English history. 

Which John, of course, had to explain to me.

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“So why is it _Burghley_ House†?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes back in his head, incredible sass for someone who out of whom I had just dragged two straight orgasms as I sat on his cock in our first-class compartment heading to Peterborough. I likely would kill him through sex one of these days, and while I would never of course boast about such a thing – well, probably never – I hoped that it would not be too soon.

“Like the Priory School case”, he managed. “An abandoned village, and Great Elizabeth's chief minister William Cecil had his country seat built on its remains.”

“I am enjoying my own country seat”, I grinned, tweaking his delicious nipples and eliciting another groan from him. “Do you know the current lord at all?”

He shuddered deliciously, and I kissed him lightly on the cheek as he fought for composure.

“A young fellow”, he said, “who only inherited a few years back when his father died. He is in his early twenties, I think that he married recently but I do not know the wife's name oh my God you have to do that again!”

So I did, and he promptly passed out. As dear Benji so often said, _I was the man!_

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We changed trains at Peterborough, with 'someone' muttering about maniacal blue-eyed sex-crazed consulting detectives for some strange reason, and nearly missed the train to Stamford as this time we had to cross a footbridge that had 'someone' not-whining (manfully, of course!). Thankfully we just made it and before long we were in the Lincolnshire town.

I do not know why but I took to Stamford much more than I had done to Tunbridge Wells recently, even though they were both historic towns of much the same size and for that matter of similar appearance especially with regard to their many older buildings. The northern town just felt friendlier in some way. We did not have to worry about accommodation here as our host had said that he would put us up.

“His card listed him as the Marquess of Exeter”, I said as our cab rolled towards Burghley House. “I suppose that is just another title of his; I know how some members of nobility seem to hoard the things.”

“Marquess is a senior to title to Lord”, he explained, “but far more people know the title Lord Burghley because of his famous ancestor. Although apparently the original Lord Burghley's eldest son Thomas was something of a disappointment; he got the baronage but it was the younger son Robert who succeeded as chief minister to first his indomitable mistress and soon after, King James the Sixth and First. And later became Earl of Salisbury.”

I nodded. I suspected that here more than in many of our cases history would play an important part, so the more historical knowledge that I (or John) carried, the better.

I was to be proven all too right in that assumption.

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Lord Burghley (he definitely looked more of a lord than a marquess) was, I thought, some way from the typical English aristocrat. He was not unlike a young bank clerk who had been dropped into the wrong world, but when he spoke it was with the assurance of his class. Although he was definitely worried over something.

“The doctor says in his works that you are a man of discretion, Mr. Holmes”, he said warily . “Are you?”

“I am”, I said, “provided that those requesting it are decent people. How may we be of service, sir?”

He looked uncertainly at us both, but nodded.

“I have something to show you”, he said. 

He crossed to a writing-desk and unlocked it, extracting a small metal box which he passed to me. It was unlocked so I opened it.

“A rosary”, I said. “An old one.”

I looked at him expectantly.

“It was found behind a small panel in a room that was once the study of my most famous ancestor whose name I share”, he said. “The room was sealed up on his death, but recently I had to have it opened because one of the walls had become damaged by water. My steward came to me and told me that a maid who had been cleaning the room had found this when she had been polishing a panel and it had opened. She had not opened it, thankfully, but I did in front of David. And I found this!”

I saw at once what his problem was. The great William Cecil had been one of the staunchest defenders of the Anglican faith in its infancy as it had striven to establish itself as the national religion. If it was suggested that he had been a closet Catholic then many history books would have to be rewritten and, unfair as it was, his family name would be damaged.

“I am sure that David would not tell anyone”, the nobleman said, “but you know how these things work, gentlemen. It is sure to get out somehow, especially with my having been in the newspapers with my recent marriage.”

_(In clarification and because John explained it to me later, I should say that there was nothing the least bit out of the ordinary about Lady Mrya Cecil. However the newspapers had made some play of the fact that she was descended from the Powletts, one of the families who had supervised the imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots, arch-enemy of Lord Burghley's noble ancestor. It really was a small world at times)._

“I shall institute some inquiries at once”, I said. “The doctor and I will return to Stamford to send some telegrams to London, and if they yield results then hopefully all will be well.”

“Would you not like to have a servant take them?” the nobleman asked.

“As you said, servants gossip”, I said. “I have an idea who might be behind this problem but I would not wish for them to become aware that I suspect them, otherwise they may well decamp and then try the same thing elsewhere. But the lady to whom I am applying is exceptionally efficient, and I am sure that we will have an answer sooner rather than later, my lord.”

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Burghley House really was magnificent, and John took particular pleasure walking around its sculptured gardens. I supposed that it all looked very nice but I knew little of greenery, although I had decided that one day I would keep bees as part of our retirement and that would need at least some knowledge of plants. For now however it was enough that John was happy.

Three days later we again met Lord Burghley in his study. He was, as I had known he would be, grim-faced.

“I would _never_ have suspected”, he sighed. “David of all people!”

The previous evening I had told the nobleman that I was sure that the rosary had been planted, and that once we had asked around enough people we would find out where it had been stolen from. As I had known he would be (because I had waited for him to be in position), the steward had eavesdropped on our conversation, and had quickly packed his bags and fled only to find two constables waiting outside the servants' entrance. He was now in a cell in Stamford police-station awaiting his fate.

“I do not see why, though”, the nobleman said. “Why would he have done such a thing?”

“Incredible as it seems, religious hatred can last for centuries”, I said. “Your steward is a loyal Catholic and he resented the fact that your ancestor did so much to end his religion's hegemony in England. He entered your employment with the intention of one day arranging this ramp; it was as you said he who suggested opening up your ancestor's room and likely he who arranged the damage that necessitated it. He stole the rosary from a museum in London; it had to be an old one to be genuine and is in fact worth quite a sum of money. He hoped to cast a shadow on your ancestor as being a secret Catholic, like some were at the time.”

“It is very sad”, the nobleman said. “He will go to gaol, I suppose.”

“That depends partly on you, sir”, I said. “Normally the decision to prosecute is rightly with the police, but I think if you asked them not to....”

I looked pointedly at him. He hesitated.

“I thought that too”, I said, “so I had my friend look through the recent estate accounts. There has been no fraud or theft; indeed he seems to have run things rather better than many in his position.”

“I shall offer him a choice”, the nobleman said firmly. “A ticket to the New World with enough money to set himself up over there, or he can face the consequences of his actions in the old one.”

“I think that that is very wise”, I said.

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“Would you want a grand house like this?” I asked John as we walked in the gardens later that day.

“No”, he said. “The upkeep must be terrible, and all for a nice walk and lots of rooms you can never get round to using. I am happy with what I have; our own rooms and each other.”

He was such a sap at times. But I loved him anyway!

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Postscriptum: Lord Burghley kept to his word and paid for his former steward to have a passage on a ship to the United States, where he decamped a month later. Showing great forbearance, he even agreed to provide a reference for the fellow. He may not have (yet) matched his illustrious ancestor's great achievements, but he certainly showed a greatness of heart that marked him out among the oftentimes variable English nobility.

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_Notes:_   
_† Scene of many movies and TV shows, including Middlemarch (1994), Pride and Prejudice (2005), The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). The medieval village that lies beneath the house failed more likely due to natural cases such as disease, rather than deliberate depopulation as had been the case at nearby Martinsthorpe._

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	12. Case 322: The Return Of The Loan Arranger ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1882\. Hi ho silver, as the Loan Arranger returns. Or what is left of Mr. Clarence Legant returns after his semi-tamed Red Indian has had his way with him several times a day and all night. The broken businessman asks Sherlock if he can help with a rival seemingly out to ruin him – and the great detective goes straight to the top!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

As John has said on several occasions, it was actually not that uncommon for people whom we had helped to return to our lives for more assistance later, or to refer family and/or friends to us for help. The only reason that the earlier canons featured so few examples of these was simply that the greater number of people involved meant that we either covered both/all of their cases or none of them, more usually the latter. However in this instance a couple whom we had met and found most pleasant company did indeed return – after just three months!

I was not surprised when this particular request for help asked if we might visit Mr. Clarence Legant at the offices of The Loan Arranger. Neither was John; like me he could pretty much guess why.

“I would wager if we lived on the ground floor, he might have managed it”, he smiled. “But all those stairs after a long, hard evening with the insatiable Tommy? No way!”

I smiled back at him as I knocked at the door. It was opened by Tommy himself who bowed and admitted us, then took a seat next to Mr. Legant who he looked at like.....like a dog viewing a particularly juicy steak. It looked like we had only just got here in time!

“Thank you for coming, gentlemen”, Mr. Legant yawned. “Tommy, any chance of drinks?”

His friend ran a hand over his master's jaw that elicited a shudder before moving into the next room. Mr. Legant looked after him.

“I just hope the horny bastard comes to my funeral”, he muttered, _“because he will likely be responsible for it!”_

We both smiled at that.

“How may we be of assistance?” I asked.

The poor fellow yawned again before beginning.

“A rival, one Mr. Alfred Hirsch, is trying to ruin me”, he said. “I have had a whole run of customers default on their debts, and although there are the courts they are a last, slow and very expensive resort. His business is not doing well and I recently found out that he was encouraging some of my customers to default in the hope that it would damage if not ruin me. I am also in the middle of moving to larger and better premises just now, so I am more vulnerable than usual.”

“The name is not known to me”, I said. “Have you heard of him, John?”

“He has been in the 'Times' on a couple of occasions for what they call 'sharp practices', he said, “which usually means illegal but not yet provable. He married Lady Belsize's daughter Hyacinth; he threatened to sue the newspaper when they portrayed them as joint-winners of the Most Stuck-Up Nose In London Contest, but nothing came of it.”

“I am glad as ever that you never read those terrible social pages”, I smiled, enjoying the inevitable Pout. 

“He is disliked even in my dubious trade”, Mr. Legant said, “which takes some doing. Thank you, Tommy.”

The brave was back with our drinks – coffee for me, which was good of him – and took his own orange juice back to his chair from which he stared fixedly at his boss. I could almost hear the villain scheming what to do to his master once we were safely gone. 

“I have three quite large loans outstanding now”, Mr. Legant said, shuddering for reasons that I could well guess, “and if Mr. Hirsch can persuade any of them to default then I would be in deep trouble. Can you help, do you think?”

I thought for a moment.

“This fellow sounds like a bully”, I said at last, “and the best way to deal with any bully is through fear. Yes, I think that I shall be able to rid you of his unwelcome attentions. I shall need to borrow Tommy for a few days.”

Tommy looked at me in surprise, but nodded. Then he looked pointedly at his master, who was suddenly breathing rather quickly.

“Come round to Baker Street at nine o' clock tomorrow morning, Tommy”, I smiled as we both rose to leave. “In the meantime, do try to leave Mr. Legant in one piece!”

The fellow looked at me with an impressive show of innocence before bowing us out. But we still heard the yelp from behind the closed door, and the pleasured moan that followed it.

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It was the following morning, and when I explained to Tommy just what I had planned he gave me the sort of look that scared even me. I shook my head at him and again got a look of total innocence that even the great Benji would have been proud of. Poor Mr. Legant, having to live with that!

It was as late as half-past two when my expected visitor arrived, one Mr. Alfred Hirsch. He was an overweight pasty-faced fellow of possibly Arabic extraction in his forties, and whose face seemed permanently set to a scowl. I was however not surprised that on entering our room he immediately crossed to our window, then shrank back when he saw who was outside.

“You must help me!” he almost shrieked. “You have to stop him!”

I feigned surprise.

“Stop who, sir?” I asked innocently.

“That fellow who keeps following me round”, he said. “Foreign-looking, and I saw a huge knife under his jacket when the wind caught it. He is after me!”

I looked suitably nonplussed.

“Why would any gentleman be 'after you', sir?” I asked. “Have you done something that would cause such a pursuit?”

“No!” he said hotly. “I am in the money business and of course there are people who do not like that, but this is England. We do not send out people after those we do not get on with!”

I thought briefly on the unpleasant Randall, and the many evil things that those in power were capable of. Unlikely as it had seemed, this fellow really was as stupid as he looked.

“Anyone in particular?” I asked disinterestedly.

My lack of urgency clearly galled him.

“Some young upstart called Legant”, he said. “New in the business and thinks he knows it all.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Mr. Clarence Legant”, I said. “Hmm. This personage that you have observed following you..... they would not happen to be of _Red Indian_ extraction by any chance, would they?”

“Might be”, he said warily. “Why do you say that?”

“I am afraid that you have crossed swords with the wrong opponent, sir”, I said firmly. “I advise you to make immediate restitution to Mr. Legant for any losses that he has incurred at your expense, as well as a large compensation payment for the inconvenience. The gentleman following you is a friend of his, and he is truly a savage beneath a very thin veneer of civilization. I would not tempt fate if I were you...”

“You are useless!” he stormed. “I shall try the police and see what they can do!”

He stormed out. We waited until he was safely gone before chuckling.

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Mr. Hirsch was at Baker Street rather earlier the next day. A few seconds past nine o' clock; it might have been sooner but Mrs. Rockland was as so often pointedly cleaning her gun within sight of the front door, so we tended not to have early morning callers.

“He is after me again!” he snapped, visibly sweating. “War-paint and all. You have to do something!”

I looked sharply at him.

“You did not mention war-paint yesterday”, I said accusingly. “Tell me, how many marks were on the fellow's face?”

He looked confused at the question but answered.

“Two”, he said. “Why?”

I gulped for effect and took a deep breath before continuing.

“How many marks were there yesterday?” I asked carefully. “It is important.”

“Three, I think”, he said. “So what?”

I whistled through my teeth and looked across at John, who shook his head and pointedly did a cut-throat motion with his hand.

“What is it?” our unpleasant visitor asked, clearly worried.

“You know how some people collect things?” I said. “Books, stamps, cigarette-cards, _et cetera?_ ”

He nodded, uncomprehending.

“The gentleman following you collects mementos”, I said. “Of people who upset his master. The fact that he now has two marks on his face is, if you like, a countdown. Tomorrow there will be one, then the next day.... he will strike!”

Our visitor stared at me in horror.

“My head?” he said faintly.

I looked away from him.

“His particular tribe does not really like having human heads around the place”, I said. “They prefer to, ahem, _un-man_ their victims at what you might describe as 'the other end'.”

He instinctively placed his hands over his crotch, and looked horrified!

“To be fair he has only done it three times so far”, I said, “and all of those were quite unpleasant gentlemen. Only the third one was at all messy; I understand that the victim kept wriggling for over an hour before he was done and fortuitously he had a son already so.....”

Our visitor was out of the door with a wail. We just about held it together until he was safely out of hearing distance.

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“I cannot thank you enough, sirs”, Mr. Legant said when we met him at his house. “Mr. Hirsch has paid back all the lost money with interest and has said that he is retiring to France as of yesterday. I owe it all to you.”

“And to Tommy of course”, I smiled. “He makes a terrifying savage brave, ready to scalp some evil businessmen. Perhaps we should use him on more of London's un-finest?”

Tommy very firmly shook his head and moved closer to his master, who chuckled. 

“Not to worry, Tommy”, he said. “I would never make you do anything that you did not want to..... oh Lord, not at this time of a morning?”

John and I both laughed, and made a swift exit. But not quite swift enough; the moan this time was both prolonged and impressively high. Poor Mr. Legant!

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	13. Interlude: Little Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Oh brother!

_[Narration by Mr. Laurence Trevelyan, Esquire]_

I stared incredulously as the urbane yet familiar figure in the doorway. Behind me, Sal and Sol exchanged uneasy glances at my sudden silence.

 _”Jay?”_ I said at last.

“Mr. Jack Trafford, if you please”, my brother grinned. “Mr. Jago Trevelyan was a runt of a boy back in Cornwall, whose horrible, selfish big brothers went off and left him all on his lonesome.”

“Uncle Morry did not treat you well?” I asked, worriedly. “He said that you were doing fine?”

“He was great”, Jago said, “if occasionally a little out of it. Like Hedrek but less so. I never thought that I would love again after Mary died, but life is strange like that.”

“I read that you were dating Lord de Vere's daughter”, I said. “He surely does not approve?”

“Liz can handle him”, he said cheerfully, “and if all else fails we can divert him onto whichever lover is currently in his wife's bed while he is boring people to tears in the House of Lords. No, after Mary I knew that no woman could ever take her place, but Lizzie and I.... we have a sort of special arrangement. Which reminds me; I saw Blaze earlier and at least he was pleased to see me. I got a whole sentence out of him!”

I smiled at that. He looked pointedly behind me.

“And I see that he and Hedrek are not the only ones happily settled”, he said. “Blaze said that you were on a diet of Italian sausage, and I see that he was being as literal as ever.”

“He is”, Sal said. “Sometimes he gets two portions at the same time!”

“Well, now it is two against two”, Jago grinned. “The incestuous possibilities!”

I elbowed the saucy fellow in the chest, ignored his mock cry of pain and ushered my littlest brother into the room.

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	14. Case 323: Jack High ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. Sometimes your luck just runs out, like when you get a call from the most annoying lounge-lizard brother on the entire planet. But this time Mr. Randall Holmes is heading for a fall – from a most surprising quarter.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I _told_ Sherlock that he should have approached Mrs. Rockland about installing those man-traps. But did he listen? No he did not. And now we had the ghastly Mr. Randall Holmes back in Baker Street again!

The only very small upside was the lounge-lizard looked decidedly stressed, which I knew was because his wife Muriel was keeping him on a very tight leash. I also knew that Sherlock's fearsome mother was also watching out for the slightest transgression, as well as most generously appointing her fourth son as her official editor of her writings. Which probably further explained the stressed look.

“This is important, Sherlock”, the annoyance said.

“Everything is important to you, Randall”, Sherlock said, “but maybe not to us. What – or as it is you, who – have you done _this_ time?”

“I have done nothing and no-one”, the pest said sniffily. “But I have to escort Miss Elizabeth de Vere down to Cranford Manor this weekend, and Lord Hamilton's eldest two are both reprehensible rakes who will chase after anything in a skirt.”

“I just _know_ that John is drawing a pot and a kettle in his notes right now”, said someone who had to have had eyes in the back of his head, “so I shall avoid stating the obvious. Why is this Miss de Vere so important?”

“Tum-Tum”, John spoke up. “His mother is one of his far too many dalliances; not a recent one but they are still friends which is unusual. The girl has just been presented.”

“Have you met her, Randall?” Sherlock asked.

“Only once”, his brother said. “She was not up to much.”

“Translation; you tried it on with her and got nowhere”, Sherlock smiled, earning himself an angry look. “But then, you are pushing fifty.”

I looked warily at him. I too was rather too close to that annoying milestone although I would only pass it a couple of months after this irritating excrescence, and I did not like it when I was in one decade of my life while someone else was still in the one before. It made me feel.... older.

“Not every woman can be expected to succumb to my charms”, our visitor said loftily.

“Except possibly Lord Bartimeus's sister-in-law”, Sherlock said, and I enjoyed the way in which his brother went pale at my friend's omniscience. “I suppose that John and I can make time to go down there. When is it exactly?”

“Saturday evening at six”, the pest said.

“I cannot go”, I said. “I promised the surgery that I would attend another of their horrible formal dinners.”

The lounge-lizard did not even try to not look disappointed. But his happiness did not last.

“That is all right”, Sherlock smiled. “I can take Muriel.”

And the lounge-lizard's face fell like a rock thrown off Beachy Head. Hah!

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In fact I did get to attend with Sherlock, as my evening of unremitting tedium had to be postponed a few hours before when it was found that someone had double-booked the hall where it was supposed to have taken place. But Sherlock obtained his sister-in-law a ticket anyway because he was such a _good_ brother.

I have to say that Miss Elizabeth de Vere surprised me, for she was nothing like her formidable mother (who was rumoured to have taken yet another lover, that old rogue Lord Burnham-Mammock who was worth a fortune after a smart investment in a diamond-mine and had been the target of several society matrons despite being in his sixties, not that I ever read the society pages). This young lady was twenty-four years of age, dark-haired and pleasant of manner, plus the way in which she looked sharply at Mr. Randall Holmes when he introduced us gained her a point in my regard. 

Even if she then went and lost two points by simpering at someone who smirked far too much. Harrumph!

“Miss de Vere is in my charge for this evening”, Mr. Randall Holmes said pointedly, looking insufferably proud at that fact. “I am charged with keeping any undesirable young men away from her.”

“Try standing back a little, then”, the lady in question said sharply, “or you may find that I still have that hat-pin on me. Although I suppose you consider yourself outside that description as you are definitely not young!”

She promptly regained three points by making the lounge-lizard blush and step swiftly away from her. He was clearly searching for a reply when there was a polite cough from nearby, and a blond gentleman of about thirty years of age appeared. The only word I can use to describe him was 'polished'; his clothes were of the highest quality and he looked supremely confident of himself. He also looked vaguely familiar from somewhere although I was sure that I would have remembered treating someone this han.... this tolerably good-looking.

The newcomer bowed to Miss de Vere and smiled at her.

“Elizabeth, dear”, he said, in what sounded like a vaguely foreign accent. “It has been far too long.”

The young lady giggled but allowed herself to be led away. Mr. Randall Holmes looked set to protest but, in an amazingly swift move, the newcomer managed to tread on his foot as he led his charge away. The lounge-lizard yelped in pain and I almost managed to not smile. 

Almost-ish.

Look, I _thought_ about not smiling. That still counts!

“I wonder who that is?” I mused.

“I do not know”, Mr. Randall Holmes ground out, “but I am damn well going to find the villain out!”

He probably did not miss Sherlock's muttered 'it takes one to know one' Good.

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The lounge-lizard was likely still looking for information on the newcomer when the newcomer himself came to join us.

“Elizabeth has gone to 'powder her nose' as they say”, he smiled, showing a perfect row of pearly teeth (I did try not to think 'all the better to eat you with'). “She had the kindness to tell me it will likely take twenty minutes while she gossips to everyone about the handsome stranger that she has been dancing all evening with.”

He really was insufferably full of himself, yet he was strangely charming. I found myself liking him despite not really wanting to.

“You know Miss de Vere?” Sherlock asked.

“Her father purchased an estate from me”, he said. “I know that I do not look it but I am, alas! a widower. I married young to a beautiful and rich girl; Mary and I had eight happy years before she was taken from me. I inherited her lands and sold one part off to Lord de Vere, much as I cannot stand the fellow. He does not like that Elizabeth's choice in men, and has only accepted my presence in his social circle as perhaps the lesser of two evils.”

For some reason that made Sherlock look at him sharply.

“May we inquire as to whom the greater evil was?” he asked. 

The newcomer smiled again.

“She is deeply in love with Eddie, one of her father's footmen”, he said. “He returns her affections, which is good, but her father would never countenance such a disparaging match. Her father sacked Eddie when he found out, but she is a determined lady and will get her man. One way or another.”

“I do not remember reading about any engagement on the lady's part”, I observed.

“The doctor, who hardly ever reads the social pages, would certainly have spotted it!” said someone who was at severe risk of a bacon-less week ahead. And he could stop shaking his head at me like that!

“Her father has accepted my suit but demanded that we do not 'go public' about our relationship for a year in the hope that she will lose interest”, the young man said. “Fortunately she is too busy finding ways to elude the many handsome young bucks that keep 'just happening' to drop by her house – well, except when she comes round to my house to see Eddie!”

“My brother was supposed to be in charge of her this evening”, Sherlock said. “He seems to consider you a threat, sir.”

The young man laughed.

“Hardly!” he said. “Besides, my interests lie in another direction completely, rather like one of my elder brothers. I must say that it is a pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. Holmes. My name is Mr. Jack Trafford.”

Sherlock looked as confused as I felt.

“Mr. Jack Trafford”, he said. “I am sure that I would have remembered meeting someone like yourself, sir.”

“A flatterer, just like Lowen said”, the man smiled.

“You know Mr. Trevelyan?” I asked, suddenly wary. A link to one of the characters I really could have enjoyed London so much more without, even if he had helped to save Sherlock's life on that one occasion. I was sure that I had more than paid for it in leers ever since, especially since he and Mr. Benjamin Jackson-Giles still seemed to come round to 221B far more often that was necessary.

“Like a brother”, the man said, “for that is what we are. In Cornwall I was Jago Trevelyan, Blaze's and Lowen's littlest brother, but here I am man about town Jack Trafford. A much more pleasant existence.”

I stared at him incredulously. I suppose that apart from the massive bulk there was something of Mr. Blaze Trevelyan in him, but there was nothing of his other and more annoying brother. Not even a leer at Sherlock.

“Eddie comes from the village next to mine in Cornwall”, the fellow explained, “and he returned home when he was so cruelly dismissed. I decided to come to London and help him; he is a good sort if hopelessly romantic. Her father has of course had me watched but he might do better to concentrate on his wife who, according to my dear Lizzie, is on gentleman friend number eight if one counts that plumber who calls at the house several times last year.”

“It is a pleasure to met you, sir”, Sherlock smiled. “We count Lowen, or Laurence as he is officially called now, as one of our closest friends. Do we not doctor?”

“Hmm.”

They both smirked for no good reason.

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Apart from yet another Cornish gentleman who was only tolerably presentable in the right light, it was one of my better evenings out. Especially when 'someone' redirected' Muriel to the kitchens just as her husband was talking rather too intimately with one of the housemaids. Followed by a certain lounge-lizard's panic when, once his wife had finished lecturing him, he realized that his charge had slipped away from the party with her gentleman friend. And he had the brass neck to come up to Sherlock and _demand_ he help him find them! Fortunately Mr. Trafford had taken the lady back to his house and her lover.

“It makes up for an evening of utter tedium tomorrow”, I said as we were driven back to Baker Street. “I have promised to do one of those 'question and answer' sessions with the surgery's greatest supporters provided they donate to the orphanage for each question.”

“Provided that none of the questions are too personal”, he agreed. “For example, if they were to ask what colour panties your friend was wearing to the formal dinner the night before.”

I stared at him in shock, and the bastard briefly lowered his belt. Lord help me, the blue and black frilly ones! I banged on the roof of the cab.

“Driver! Go faster!”

The bastard really was trying to kill me through sex. _And making a damn good job of it!_

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Postscriptum: Despite his links to definitely the most annoying Cornish ex-fisherman in London I had to admire Mr. Trafford for his actions. He arranged for he and his 'future wife' to elope to Gretna Green for a marriage there; of course it was his friend Eddie who went to Caledonia. I was initially concerned when Miss de Vere's father died in a shooting accident and I did make some inquiries, not because I suspected Mr. Trafford but because it had happened in a shooting-party and one of the suspects was a gentleman who had been intimate with Mrs. de Vere (him and half of England's nobility, according to someone who hardly ever read the social pages of the 'Times'!). However it was genuinely an accident, and not long after it was discovered that Mr. Trafford's 'marriage' was in fact unlawful. He and his 'wife' divorced at once; John told me that the social pages (which he was still hardly ever reading) had commented on her remarriage to a friend of her husband's but luckily interest in the matter soon died down, especially after Mr. Trafford became godfather to his former 'wife's first-born child James. The first of eight; apparently Cornwall had its share of young dogs!

Mr. Trafford took a new house in London which, by some strange coincidence, was right next door to one of Sweyn's molly-houses. Which meant that John still got to see him from time to time. I always knew from the deeper than usual Pout just when that had happened!

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	15. Case 324: Electric Avenue ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901\. The wonders of modern technology often provide new and exciting methods of removing people into the next world – but who would want to kill a humble tram-conductor? Constable Edward 'Ginger' Tudor asks for Sherlock's help in what may or may not be a murder on his old patch.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

It was odd that this adventure happened when it did, not just that it was the start of December and London was gearing up for the festive season, but in that it saw a death wrought by the still relatively new medium of electricity. Because barely two months later that same medium would strike again, and remove someone known to us both.

We had not seen our friend Constable Edward Tudor for a little while, and I knew that after his move to Hammersmith following the Regent's Canal Affair he had been very much keeping his head down. He had as I have noted elsewhere since moved on to Paddington where he was doing well, although I knew that Sherlock still kept the proverbial 'weather eye' on him. Sadly the past performance of the Metropolitan Police Service did not preclude the possibility of someone belatedly taking action against our friend for the failings of one of his fellow officers.

I might have seen more of Mr. Tudor despite his move, but his second relocation had placed him just around the corner from my friend Sir Peter Greenwood's house, outside which he patrolled, and Peter very generously took on the affable red-haired giant and his family for me as part of his philanthropic work. We had occasionally seen the constable in his role as an assistant to Miss St. Leger, for when she needed certain information couriered rather than wired or posted to us (I had observed but obviously not commented on the fact that the policeman always wore rather too tight shorts and vests on those occasions, regardless of the weather!). So it was with pleasure that we saw a familiar red thatch in our rooms that cold December morning.

“Ah Ginger”, Sherlock smiled (I knew that our friend liked the nickname otherwise we would not have used it). “You must be here about that recent tramway death.”

The constable nodded. 

“Very strange it was, sir”, he said, carefully folding his long limbs into our fireside chair (for all his size there was little meat on those long bones). “No-one seemed to have any motive to kill poor Mr. Collins, but he's dead as a door-nail. And no doubt about it, it was murder.”

“Please tell us all about it”, Sherlock said. “You know how unreliable newspaper reports can be; I am sure that you will be much more informative.”

Our visitor nodded and began.

“Earlier this year my old area saw the first of those new electric trams, sir”, he said. “I don't like them myself; can't see why they don't make it work for the trains on the full-size railway instead. Big vehicles careering around narrow streets at high speeds seems asking for trouble if you ask me. And trouble we got, though not the sort we were expecting.”

_(My readers may wonder at our friend taking an interest in a case in an area in which he had only briefly served as a constable, but sad to say some of his fellow constables in the Metropolitan Police Service had made comments about the Canal case on his arrival there. However his sergeant, a very solid fellow called Mr. John Griggs, had stamped down heavily on such behaviour and three of the perpetrators had very nearly lost their positions. Ginger therefore felt some affinity for his old superior, especially as he said to us that the fellow was certain never to get promoted 'because he spoke the truth too much')._

“The trams get their electricity from overhead wires, and they have a wire loop thing that runs from the top of the vehicle up to pull down the power”, our guest went on. “Sometimes of course it comes off – wouldn't want to be on an open top deck when that happens, though I suppose they have catches and all otherwise no-one would want to ride up there – and the tram has a sort of pole thing kept at the back to loop it back on.”

“Two days ago Vehicle Number 4 went off with one Mr. Luke Rose at the wheel and Mr. Michael Collins as conductor. Despite the names they're brothers or rather half-brothers; Mr. Rose is married and Mr. Collins is not. They live in terraces next door but one to each other and they seemed to have gotten on well enough, or so everyone said.”

“On the day of the murder, the wire thing at the top came loose and Mr. Collins took the pole to hook it back on. The pole was supposed to have an insulation block beneath the hook so the holder wouldn't fry themselves – but someone had replaced it with a metal one that had been painted to look like the original. Poor Mr. Collins never knew what hit him; he was thrown nearly off the top deck as well as being fried!”

“So that is why you think it was murder”, Sherlock said. The young constable looked troubled.

“Not just murder, but likely by someone in the depot”, he said. “I got them to lend me one of their engineers to show me around the vehicle when I searched it, and he spotted something. A small spring had been removed from the bottom of the wire leading up from the tram to the overhead wires. Mike explained to me that that would have made the line much more likely to come off and need replacing.”

“Thereby necessitating Mr. Collins to use the pole”, Sherlock said. “We had better start with the obvious. _Cui bono_ – who benefited from the conductor's death?”

“No-one”, the policeman said. “He had no savings, rented his house, and wordly goods were pretty much the clothes that he was buried in. It seems there was no motive at all.”

There seemed nothing unusual in that last sentence yet it made Sherlock look sharply at our guest. He nodded.

“Mike didn't say it directly, but I got the impression that the late Mr. Collins wasn't liked much around the depot”, he said. “But we tend not to kill people for being antisocial, sir.”

“Maybe we do in this instance”, Sherlock said. “I need you to find out the names of anyone that was seen talking to either Mr. Collins or Mr. Rose. In particular anyone who talked to both of them.”

“What're you thinking, sir?” Ginger asked.

“I am thinking”, Sherlock said, “that once again you are right. This was indeed murder, and it may be impossible to prove.

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We had another caller later that day. Sherlock's cousin Mr. Lucifer Garrick.

“I heard that you were looking into the Hammersmith death”, he said, sitting down (very carefully as per usual, I noted). “I came across something to do with that the other day and might have looked into it myself if I had the time, so I am glad that you are.”

“What is it?” Sherlock asked.

“You know how the conductor and the driver were half-brothers?” our visitor said.

“Yes?” we both said.

“The dead man has a brother, Mr. Paul Collins”, he said. “He runs a small private investigations firm over in the Temple. He normally had nothing to do with his late sibling who could surely never have afforded his services and seemingly had no need for them, yet when I was looking into him for something else recently I found that he had been to Hammersmith one time. From what was said to me they were not far short of hating each other.”

Sherlock sighed for some reason.

“I feared as much”, he said. “I do not suppose you are free to do any digging now, Luke?”

His cousin shook his head.

“Digging there will be later, though”, he said, grinning lasciviously. “Benji will be over to tell me about little Charles's christening this afternoon, and you know how he always gets so damn emotional just like at the event. Which means that the only way for him to work off all that angst.....”

“I shall wait for my friend Ginger”, Sherlock said frostily. “At least _he_ does not feel the need to traumatize me every time that he comes round!”

His cousin sniggered and left. Sherlock scowled after him.

“I think that I shall pay a visit to 'That Shop'”, he said with a dark smile. “Perhaps Benji would like some extra 'playthings' for when he visits my overly informative cousin tomorrow!”

I made a mental note to check the obituaries page for the next few days. And someone really could stop shaking their head like that!

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A few days later Ginger returned and handed a set of papers to Sherlock, who read through them.

“As I thought”, he sighed. “Our friend Miss St. Leger confirmed it for me. There can be no doubt.”

“Of what, sir?” Ginger asked.

“That Mr. Rose murdered Mr. Collins.”

The constable looked at him in bewilderment.

“But why, sir?” he asked. “They were brothers!”

“Half-brothers”, Sherlock said, “and given some of my own siblings I can assure you that that relationship in no way precludes a desire to murder. In this case the catalyst was Mr. Collins's brother Paul.”

“In what way, sir?” our visitor asked.

“In the course of his investigations into something else, Mr. Paul Collins made the discovery that the brother of whom he was not inordinately fond had been having an affair”, Sherlock said. “That would have been matter enough, except that the woman that he was sleeping with was his half-brother's wife Mrs. Rose!”

I thought at once back to the Addleton Affair and the squire's lady wife who had conspired with her brother-in-law to murder her husband, only for the villain to dispatch her as well. And also the Montpensiers who had also met bad ends when their scheming had been exposed by Sherlock. Some people in society were just..... ugh!

“Mr. Paul Collins sorted matters by simply visiting Mr. Rose and telling him the truth”, Sherlock said, nodding for some reason or other. “The driver was in an excellent position to do what he did; he presumably has to check his vehicle before each day's work so the deadly change could be slipped in easily enough. If you think about it, he is in a worryingly strong position.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. “He is a murderer, after all.”

“Because he murdered his own brother for cuckolding him with his own wife”, Sherlock said. “What do you think an English jury will make of that? I am sure that when you interview the three people on your lists who spoke to both gentlemen, Ginger, they would get you enough evidence to be sure, although I also think it likely that a smart lawyer may encourage Mr. Rose to confess beforehand. No jury would convict on a capital charge.”

I could see that he was right. Yet just like in Lauder, a man had committed murder.

“You may be able to persuade him to accept admitting to a non-capital charge”, Sherlock said. “Or you may not. That I do not know. But this man will never hang for what he did.”

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Postscriptum: Mr. Rose did not hang for his crime and did after some pressure from his lawyer admit to a lesser charge for which he served five years in gaol. At the end of that time he came out and went to work for Mr. Paul Collins's detective agency, whereon he lived a quiet life without any bangs or flashes. Unlike a certain member of my friend's own family who was only two months away from making the final mistake of a generally unpleasant and useless life.

Sherlock also had to intervene when the local inspector in Hammersmith tried to seize the credit for the successful investigation from Sergeant Griggs, advising the former that his appearance in the newspapers might well lead them to inquire what he got up to at his gentlemen's club. And with the lady down at number seventeen, Aspidistra Lane. And with the local lady councillor for his ward.

Some people!

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	16. Case 325: Tea For Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1901-1902: A nice cuppa tea – except that this tea nearly kills the wrong man and Sherlock has to race to save the real victim's life. But Death is not to be denied....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as old Abrahams, who was in terror of his life.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I have often observed over the many cases that Sherlock and I undertook together that he frequently traversed the grey area between justice and the law (one critic once quipped that never mind traversing, he performed a full Lithuanian Rain-Dance in it!). I know that to many people they are one and the same thing, but like all tools the law can be a blunt instrument when what is often needed is a more delicate touch. Sherlock often effected solutions that were close to or even blatantly illegal but which always better served the interests of those involved (the innocent parties at least). Yes, there was often a significant difference between justice and the law. 

In this case, which in one way at least strangely echoed our recent one up in distant Berwickshire, the difference was a dying man. _And I let him die._

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In December that year we had a family drama to cope with, one which would have uncanny echoes of what the whole country would go through the very next year. Mr. Daniel Hunter, the lover of Sherlock's brother General Carlyon Holmes, was suddenly taken very ill and the doctors diagnosed appendicitis. This was at the time an often deadly affliction and I would always remember the broken look on the distraught soldier's tear-stained face as he confronted the prospect of losing his young love so soon after having secured him. That his five sons all rallied round their father to show their support for his lover demonstrated the true greatness of heart that has made our Nation so great, despite what many of the modern generation think of those times now.

I was exceptionally fortunate that my friend Sir Peter Greenwood was an acquaintance of one of the new king's medical team, one Doctor Frederick Treves who was one of the few men capable of treating this deadly affliction. I will not go into details as I do not wish readers to unexpectedly part with any recent meals but the process was very complicated and carried a high risk of failure. Fortunately for us all it worked and Mr. Hunter made a full recovery. I like to think (although of course I have no evidence to back this up) that our friend's operation provided useful experience for the second such operation that Doctor Treves performed the following summer on another perhaps slightly more exalted patient.

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During that autumn I had worked to complete our treasure-hunt adventure set in the Black Country (The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons) which was published in the 'Strand' magazine in the weeks leading up to Christmas. That was a busy time of the year what with the early onset of winter illnesses and I was at the surgery rather more than I had expected. So I was glad for Sherlock to have a potential client especially as it also it rescued me from a Christmas tree which was frustratingly reluctant to yield its place in the room before Twelfth Night. The elderly lady who requested our attentions was poorly dressed but most presentable, by name of Mrs. Mary Minton.

“I know I shouldn't be troubling Gentlemen such as your good selves”, she babbled, “but I've been so worried that....”

“Tea.”

She looked at Sherlock in surprise, her flow of verbiage temporarily stemmed as he poured her a cup. 

“Sir?” she asked. 

“Madam, you are quite clearly a lady of sense.” He held up his hand when she looked poised to object, or worse, start off again. “Your clothes are of a basic standard yet the repairs in them are precise, the stitching being of the highest quality. You can afford a pair of spectacles even though you are not wearing them today; the bridge-marks on your nose are quite distinctive, and that tells me you manage your money successfully as such visual aids are not cheap. I take it that an occurrence in your job as a cleaner has caused you some distress?”

She stared at him in amazement.

“Scuffed shoes”, I explained, gesturing to her footwear. “People who clean for a living make distinctive marks when they kneel down.”

“If the doctor has finished letting daylight in upon my magic”, Sherlock smiled, “you will take your tea, sample one of Mrs. Rockland's delicious cakes, make yourself comfortable and tell us precisely what brings you here today. Take your time, please.”

She did as he said and sighed happily over a jam doughnut.

“I live in Lambeth, sir”, she said, “and my husband Bert works on the tube. Our boys have all moved out now which I suppose I should be grateful for but I miss 'em. To help make ends meet I clean for two gentlemen. Young Mr. Riseley is a lawyer who has a small apartment in Waterloo right by the big station and I do mornings there, then afternoons I go to old Mr. Abrahams's place in the Temple. Beaconsfield Mews, a very nice area.”

“The Inns of the Court”, Sherlock mused. “Is that Judge Methuselah Abrahams who retired recently?”

“That's him, sir”, she said, clearly pleased that her employer was known to us. “A lovely old man, he lives alone now his wife has passed but his son visits from time to time. The place is too big for one person, but he doesn't want to move and nor should he!”

“His son wishes him to move?” Sherlock asked.

“I think he suggested it once but Mr. Abrahams said no”, she said. “The son – Mr. Jeroboam – is.... I don't want to say he's a bad man but I always thinks he's eyeing the place up for when the old man dies. Though that's just my opinion.”

“And most probably a correct one”, Sherlock smiled. “I take it that something has befallen your Mr. Abrahams?”

She reddened.

“It really wasn't my place, sir”, she said apologetically. “But about three months ago I overheard Mr. Jeroboam talking to his father. Some dangerous criminal was about to be released and Mr. Jeroboam was anxious lest he try something. It was the judge that had sent him down, see?”

“Indeed”, Sherlock said. “There was more, was there not?”

She nodded.

“Up till that day Mr. Abrahams was fine”, she said. “But after his son told him about that man coming out, he seemed to just fall in on himself. Since then he's not been out to the garden at all and it's a right mess, if you don't mind me saying so. He hardly ever uses the front rooms of the house, especially the main room which has a lovely big bay window that catches the sun. Also he's got a gun which I'm sure is new as I never saw it until the other week. I don't know if he's told Mr. Jeroboam about that, but it scares me!”

“He has not changed towards you at all?” Sherlock asked.

“Not as such sir”, she said, “though he gets nervous very easily. I was delayed about ten minutes last Wednesday, the day there was that accident on the bridge, and I thought he might not let me in.”

Sherlock frowned.

“I do not suppose that you heard the name of the person who has caused all this unrest?” he asked. 

“No”, she said, “but I remember the date. It was October the second, the day after my eldest's birthday. Will brought the grandchildren round for the evening and young Billy was talking about this newfangled ship that sails underwater† if you please!”

“That is excellent, Mrs. Minton!” Sherlock smiled. “Well done for remembering such an important detail. I can ask my police friends who it was that was received a long sentence from your judge and was released just after that date. _Most_ observant of you.”

The lady blushed at his praise, and I was half afraid that she was going to start simpering at him. It might be a new century but some thing did not change, worse luck!

_Some smug bastard's knowing smirks included!_

“Thank you, sir”, our visitor smiled. 

Sherlock leaned forward.

“I am going to investigate this case for you, Mrs. Minton”, he said gravely. “I find it intriguing, and as matters are quiet in my life at the moment I am more than happy to do it merely to satisfy my own curiosity. But it is only fair to warn you that there may be an element of danger involved in this matter. If someone is indeed threatening the judge's life then we must consider _your_ safety as much as his.”

“Mine, sir?” she asked, wide-eyed. 

“Yours”, Sherlock said firmly. “You may choose to not continue working there of course, and in the circumstances that would probably be wise, but if you do stay on then you must ensure that you go there at the same time every day and leave at the same time as well. If someone _is_ watching the house then they will avoid acting around those times.”

“I'll do that, sir”, she said. “The judge – do you think you can save him?”

“I will do what I can”, Sherlock promised.

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“You did not seem very optimistic”, I observed once the cleaner had gone.

“I am not”, he said ruefully. “As we both know the potential killer has all the advantages in a situation like this. Our best hope is to salvage what we can. But perhaps we can hope for a late Yuletide miracle.”

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My writings were such that I had no regular days at the surgery by this time in my career, although as I said, I had been there a lot this cold season because of both the outbreak of winter flu and a doctor who had left for New Zealand after unexpectedly coming into an inheritance there. Another thing that had not changed was that I still attended occasional fund-raising functions for them, much as I loathed such events. But one had to take the rough with the smooth.

It was this altruism that was to yield an unexpected reward for me at Langstone House, the home of the truly frightful Mrs. Antonia de Courcey, one of the _grande dames_ of London society. She was so bad that Sherlock had flatly refused an invitation to come with me to the Twelfth Night Dance citing a desperate desire to be as far away from Lady Antonia as was physically possible for the preservation of his ear-drums. The coward!

Though he had promised to make it up to me later and that panties would be involved somewhere down the line. That would help me get through an awful evening – _assuming that the anticipation did not kill me!_

One of the people whom I often met at these functions was Doctor Owen Pardew, a dry if not sarcastic Welshman who tended to some of the most important people in the city. We would often discuss our patients – not by name of course – and laugh over the foolishness of humanity. 

“I had a most interesting case only last week”, he said. “Absolute confidence, of course.”

“Of course”, I promised. 

“In the Temple, a patient who is moderately wealthy has but one son to inherit”, he said. “However he has recently had cause to doubt that the boy is acting in his best interests, pressuring him to sell the large house that he inhabits. It is in a most excellent location and could be refurbished as a quality town-house then sold for a considerable sum.”

“The patient is not one of my regulars; he used to have that idiot Claridge who shot off to the Lakes to become an artist of all things! He had asked him to recommend someone else and as we both hailed from Glamorganshire, he went and suggested me. The patient has virtually no connection with the outside world except for a helpful neighbour's daughter and a cleaning-lady who comes in and 'does' for him every afternoon.”

A faint memory stirred. 

“What was wrong with this patient?” I asked.

“Nerves”, my fellow medic said shortly. “He seemed terrified of something but he would not say what. I had a feeling that he is already taking something judging from his dilated pupils, although he denied that. He also has a moderate heart condition so a severe enough shock could kill him.”

“Is this fear a recent thing?” I asked.

“He says that it started two or three months back”, Doctor Pardew said. “Nice old buffer.”

I made a mental note to tell Sherlock about this as soon as I got home.

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I was able to slip away from the dance some little time before midnight, as I naturally wanted to welcome in the New Year with Sherlock. And in Sherlock.

My love grunted pleasurably as I shifted inside of him. We had both come once already but I was still hard and horny and besides, I needed to tell him of my discovery. He lay back panting, running a lazy hand across my chest as I leaned over him.

“Very interesting”, he said. “Inspector Baldur is coming round tomorrow morning so he may have some information as to our freed felon.”

I changed my angle and teased his prostate, eliciting a moan.

“Sherlock”, I said carefully, “you know that my birthday is coming up next week?”

He smirked.

“Yes”, he said. “Which one is it again? _Forty-ten?”_

I punished him by forcing his legs back and pummelling his prostate, causing him to come for a second time. I was close myself but I held back. Somehow.

“Do not be mean!” I snipped. “I do not want you to make a big thing of it!”

He looked at me through slitted eyes.

“So if I let you do whatever you want with me for that day”, he asked casually, “that would be a suitable present?”

That was it. I came violently, panting hard at the sudden exertion.

“Hell yes!” I bit out.

In retrospect I should have suspected something from the pleased expression on his face but what little remained of my mind was still trying to pull itself together. And to remember which was was up!

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Inspector Baldur duly came round just after eleven the following morning. I felt sorry for him that he had had to work through much of the festive season but Sherlock had arranged with Mrs. Rockland to bake two full-sized sponge cakes, one for the station and one for him and his ever-expanding family, so perhaps there were compensations.

“No doubt as to who your man is”, the inspector said, accepting a coffee as he sat down by the fire. “Mr. Hubert Morris, known as 'Bruiser' to his few remaining friends. Old Abrahams sent him down in 1882 for his part in the Liss House Robbery. Two members of the family were murdered and he got twenty years.”

“A pity that they did not hang him”, I said grimly.

“Two of his colleagues went to the gallows”, the inspector said. “I telegraphed LeStrade when you asked me about the case just to check the details. One of them killed Mr. Penrith and the other struck the fatal blow that finished off his wife. Morris shot her first, but his lawyer managed to convince the jury that she was still living when Benton struck her – the medical evidence seemed to back that up – so your man avoided the drop. A fourth member Parkes got seven years for aiding and abetting. He's kept his nose clean since getting out much to the old man's surprise, and is doing well for himself over in Ireland.”

“How did you catch them?” Sherlock asked.

“They had no kids of their own but it was the villains' bad luck that the Penriths were looking after their nephew”, he said. “Bright lad wrote down everything including times and descriptions, and once they had gone even fenced off where the footprints were. They gave him witness protection of course and I suppose that he went off somewhere. The fewer people who know of such things, the better.”

I thought back to the brave Miss Minnie Warrender who had made just such a sacrifice in leaving England for Newfoundland. We had offered to bring her back to England after Sherlock's 'return from the dead' but she had settled happily over there, although we had arranged for her to have some holidays in the Old Country in order to see her sisters and their families.

“What about Mr. Morris?” Sherlock asked. 

“He has got himself a job down the docks just a few miles from the judge's house”, the inspector said. “I alerted the local station and they said that they would increase patrols in the area, but we cannot watch the place round the clock. I am sending a man to speak with Morris's employers as well just so he knows that we are keeping an eye on him.”

“That is good of you”, Sherlock smiled. “Did LeStrade say what his impression of the man was? I always value his judgement.”

“He said that he thinks he might stay out of trouble this time”, the inspector said. “Morris had a young kid before he went inside and the boy got given to his brother to raise. Young fellow's a bank clerk now and wary about his reappeared father, as I would be in his shoes. I suppose that he might keep his nose clean though the general rule is once a crim, always a crim.”

“That”, Sherlock said, “is sadly true.”

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The next development in the case caught us off guard a few days later when Inspector Baldur called round. His first words were shocking.

“I thought you two gentlemen might care to know that someone nearly died in Beaconsfield Mews last night.”

“Judge Abrahams?” Sherlock asked. The inspector shook his head. 

“No. His neighbour Mr. Charles Smith.”

“How?” I asked.

“The doctor who examined him said that he suspected poison but he could not be sure until further tests have been done”, the inspector said. “It may have been a case of mistaken identity. Mr. Smith lives at 'Maytree Cottage', and Judge Abrahams lives at 'Maytree _House'_ , plus the two gentlemen are not that dissimilar in appearance. Perhaps the attacker got the wrong man.”

“With poison?” Sherlock asked dubiously. “That would be unlikely, unless....”

His voice trailed off and he seemed to be thinking deeply. The two of us waited.

“Inspector”, he said quietly, “is there a _Mrs._ Smith?”

“No, she died some years back”, the inspector said. “He is an invalid; his daughter looks after him now as she has a house nearby in Chesham Lane. Why?”

“Where is she now?” Sherlock asked.

“She went with her father to the hospital but she has a job at a dress-shop near Bishopsgate”, he said. “I would guess that she must be there now, after all the kerfuffle this morning.”

“We need to see her”, Sherlock said urgently. “Do you have the name of the place?”

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The general manager of Minniver's was a Mr. Darren Ratland, an unfortunate name as his features reminded me of Mr. Darwin's assertion that rats and humans shared a common ancestor many millions of years back. Some it seemed has not evolved that far apart. He was most definitely not pleased to see us.

“This is a busy department store, gentlemen”, he said testily. “I cannot spare one of our girls for half an hour of idle chatter.”

I expected Sherlock to protest but to my surprise he stood up.

“That is quite understandable”, he said smoothly. “I promise that we will trouble you no further. I merely wished to spare you the embarrassment of a visit from the local constabulary. Maybe several visits.”

“What do you mean?” the fellow demanded. “What has that dratted girl gone and done now?”

Sherlock fixed him with an icy glare. The man edged backwards. I would have done too, facing that look.

“'That dratted girl' as you call her has done nothing”, he said. “She may however be in possession of important information pertinent to a current investigation with which I am involved. But I understand your preference for the _official_ channels. Your customers will doubtless be reassured when four or five policemen descend to take her to the nearest station for several hours of questioning. And then return her here, most likely during the evening rush; we know that they have little sense of appreciation for the modern business-owner. The London bobby can be a blunt instrument and I personally would not want a whole number of them in any shop of mine, doubtless gawking at the customers, making them all wonder just who has done what to....”

He was scurrying for the door.

“I will send her in at once!” he squeaked and was gone.

I chuckled. My man was so smart!

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Miss Paula Smith would, I thought, have made a worryingly efficient murderess. Despite being only in her early twenties she was cool, calm and collected, and seemed totally unperturbed by our visit.

“Yes, I did wonder if the events next door had something to do with poor Father”, she said. “Mr. Abrahams is a nice old gentleman and a good neighbour; I wish my own were more like him. I had taken to doing some shopping for him of late as his son's visits were somewhat infrequent.”

“I would greatly value your opinion as to his son, young Mr. Jeroboam Abrahams”, Sherlock said. “I have never met the gentleman myself.”

She frowned.

“I would not call him young”, she said, curling her lip slightly. “And it would be a great strain on the English language to call him a gentleman.” She laid her well-kept hands on the table and I saw that she had a thin gold engagement ring. “I am engaged to be married to a Mr. Albert Flint who works at the bakery down the road, but despite being fully cognizant of that fact Mr. Abrahams made certain suggestions that were _most_ improper. He seemed to think that because he was a lawyer and my fiancé was only a baker, that that made his behaviour acceptable in some way.”

“How did you react to that?” I asked. She looked hard at me.

“He was unwise enough to do it while I had access to a knitting needle”, she said tartly. “He did _not_ repeat the error!”

I winced.

“Did you do all of Mr. Abrahams's shopping of late?” Sherlock asked.

“Everything except the tea”, she said. “He had a passion for the sort of rare brands that you cannot get in the shops, so his son would arrange for them to be shipped in once every two months.”

“The son did not bring them himself, then?” Sherlock asked.

“Actually he did. I believe he picked them up from a place in the docks about a mile away, or so his father once told me. Some of them smelled a little, although that was just my opinion, but I think from something Mr. Abrahams once said that his late wife had liked them so possibly it was a way of remembering her. People do that, I read somewhere.”

“Tell me about your father's poisoning”, Sherlock said.

“It was all very strange”, she said. “This morning I called home and brought some shopping for Mr. Abrahams as usual. After I checked on my father who was fine I went and knocked on the connecting door. As I am sure you are aware sirs, Mr. Abrahams had become increasingly nervous of late so we had arranged four loud knocks – three, a pause and then one more – as a signal that I had some shopping for him. He let me through, I put his items in his cupboards for him, then took my father's things back through the door. He definitely locked it behind me; I heard it click.”

“Why did you not unpack your father's items first?” Sherlock asked.

“I was running slightly late”, she said, “and I did not want to worry Mr. Abrahams any more than was necessary. He preferred me to call at the same time each day when I brought him his things, even with our signal. I spoke to his cleaner earlier this week and she said that he nearly did not let her in one day when she was delayed. A very nice lady; she was worried about him too.”

“That was considerate of you”, Sherlock said. “What happened next?”

“I came back and unpacked my father's things”, she said. “I was in a hurry; I would normally have cooked some lunch but we are having a stock-take soon and I had said that I would come in early to help, so I made my father some sandwiches and promised a cooked meal later. Mr. Ratland can be.... a little demanding.”

“We noticed!” I muttered. She smiled at me.

“It was surely Providence that I was so rushed, because five minutes after leaving I realized that I had foolishly left my pills behind.”

“Your pills?” I asked. “You are on medication?”

“My doctor is treating me for a minor heart irregularity”, she said. “I ran back to the house and arrived to find my father on the floor, thrashing about and calling for help. It was my even greater luck that Doctor Bazenger, who lives the other side of Mr. Abrahams, was home at the time; he treated him while I summoned an ambulance. The doctors say that he should recover but only because he received proper medical assistance so quickly.”

Sherlock nodded.

“He had not opened your pills?” he asked. She shook her head.

“I always get the chemist to screw the lid on extra-tight”, she said. “At my own house, my neighbour's daughter sometimes comes in if her mother is late home from work and I do not want to risk her getting hold of them; you know how quick children can be. I only need one a day and I use the nutcrackers to open and close them. My neighbour is a young fellow who works on the railways; he is quite strong and would open them for me if I needed him to. Or Albert if he is around.”

She looked at Sherlock thoughtfully.

“This has something to do with Mr. Abrahams's nerves”, she said shrewdly. “What is going on?”

“I very much fear that the answer to that question is attempted murder”, he said grimly. “And that we may be unable to prevent it.”

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We were in a cab that was heading the mercifully short distance from Miss Smith's shop to Beaconsfield Mews. I say mercifully because Sherlock had instructed the driver to go flat out and the cab was rocking so violently that I was starting to feel nauseous. Maybe it was possible to get seasick in a London cab......

“What did you mean, 'too late'?” I asked grabbing the strap as I was hurled into Sherlock round a particularly sharp turn. He typically seemed able to ignore the laws of physics that were bouncing me around the cab like a rubber ball. “Mr. Smith survived.”

“I fully expect a second murder to be attempted before the day is out”, Sherlock said grimly. “If it has not been already.”

“What?” I gasped. “Oof!”

We had reached our destination as was evident by the sudden stop that hurled me against the small door at the front of the cab. Sherlock thankfully had an arm round me to stop me ending up astride the horse; he leaped out, threw a handful of change at the cabbie and shot up the path, leaving me trailing in his wake. He banged on the front door and I held my breath.....

It was opened by Mr. Methuselah Abrahams whom I recognized from the picture of him that I had seen in the 'Times'. He looked at us both and clearly knew who we were.

“Are we too late?” Sherlock demanded. 

The old man shook his head.

“You are too early”, he said. “It would be better if you came back later.”

“I am afraid that we cannot do that”, Sherlock said firmly. “Justice must be done, and seen to be done. You of all people should know that, Your Honour.”

For a moment the stand-off continued but then the old man sighed, nodded and stood back. Sherlock hurried past him into the hallway, hesitated only briefly then turned sharply left and went through into what had to be the front room. I followed.

There was a body on the hearth-rug, a middle-aged man gasping for breath. He was clearly dying. I moved past Sherlock to try to at least do something only for him to restrain me.

“If you save that man's life, John”, he said quietly, “it will only be so that he can hang.”

I stared at him in confusion.

“What?” I asked. 

“That is Mr. Jeroboam Abrahams, son of the master of this house”, Sherlock said glancing at the elderly judge. “He is charged with the crime of attempted patricide. Only a chance sequence of events exposed his evil intentions and he is now meeting the same end that he intended for the man who helped give him life.”

The prone man's movements were growing weaker. There was clearly nothing that I could do for him.

“Poison?” I asked. 

Sherlock nodded and took a seat. The judge stood before him, close to his dying son. I was reminded of a courtroom except that this time the judge was not in control.

“Mr. Jeroboam Abrahams knows that a convicted felon, whom his father put away, is shortly to leave gaol”, he began in a soft voice. “He presses one more time to try to persuade his father to sell the house, but when he is refused he puts his evil plan into action.”

“He is fortunate that although he has deemed general shopping to be beneath him, he is still responsible for arranging the rare teas that his father likes. Even better the strong taste of some of these is ideal for his dark schemes. He doses them with a drug designed to cause paranoia and makes sure that his father knows that 'Bruiser' Morris is about to become a free man. The slow dosage will not kill his father but it may succeed in driving him to sell up, and if it does not then he can always add an extra dose one day. People will readily believe that the judge was driven to his death by fear.”

“Except that this morning and courtesy of his own laziness, disaster strikes. A neighbour's kind daughter brings in Mr. Abrahams's shopping and in her haste inadvertently takes a package of the tea intended for him back into her own father's house. Presumably he must be more susceptible to the poison but thanks to the blessed Providence he is spared. When young Mr. Abrahams learns of this he realizes the risk of imminent exposure. He must strike fast before the day is out.”

“Fortunately the neighbour is in hospital and his daughter at work. We know that the judge was deeply paranoid and kept largely to the back of the house, so he can easily use the connecting door to enter their house where he retrieves the poisoned tea. He then makes his father a cup using it, thinking that his problems are over. Or so he believes. However it is one of the truest tenets of crime that one should never underestimate one's victim.” 

Sherlock turned to the judge. 

“You guessed when you heard of your neighbour's attack as to what had happened, and therefore you knew that your son had to have been behind it. I do not know what ruse you used, but you distracted him in some way so that you could switch your cups. The result we see all too clearly before us.”

Old Mr. Abrahams bowed his head. 

“Judge, jury, executioner”, he said softly. “If only the fool boy had waited. I am surely not long for this world but Jerry wanted everything now. He will want no more.”

I sat there in shock. Sherlock rose to his feet.

“Mr. Methuselah Abrahams”, he said heavily, “you have been found guilty of filicide, the killing of you own son. However the fact that you acted in self-defence must be weighed in the balance. Your sentence is to live out your life in that knowledge and to do what good you can with an estate that now has no-one left to inherit. May God have mercy upon your soul.”

The judge nodded. Sherlock helped me to my feet and we left. The man on the hearth had stopped moving.

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The reader will by now understand why this case was not published in my original canon. Apparently the Good Lord was in no particular hurry for the judge's company as he lived on for a further four years. When he died most of his estate went to charity but there were sizeable bequests to both Miss Smith (by then Mrs. Flint, with a son and daughter) and, much to her surprise, Mrs. Minton.

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_Notes:_   
_† 'Holland 1', 63 foot (19m) long. Not very successful, she was decommissioned in 1913 and sank while under tow to be scrapped. She was later raised and is currently on display at the Royal Navy Museum in Gosport, Hampshire._

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	17. Case 326: The Adventure Of The Red Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1902\. A quiet Northamptonshire hamlet is the new home of Miss Clementine St. Leger, who has a sense of approaching trouble about a forthcoming local event and calls on her friends to help. Redford does indeed see a death but the victim was loathed by just about everybody. As the shadows of past deeds resurface, the sins of one generation are paid for by another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Minor character suicide.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

_I had not thought that we would have the pleasure of meeting Miss St. Leger so soon after her inveigling of us into investigating the 'disappearance' of Lady Frances Carfax, but early one February morning – a little too early if truth be told – she called at Baker Street. Sherlock and I were both in our dressing-gowns and it served her right that he had not yet had his third coffee of the day and was therefore less than his usual self (or as I would have said once I was safely out of throwing range, damn nigh impossible!). I was also barely recovered from my 'forty-tenth' birthday nearly four weeks back, where I had had Sherlock every way imaginable!_

_Life was good!_

_“I may need your help, both of you”, she said sitting down and looking far too alert for such an unseemly hour. “Good heavens doctor, you look rough!”_

_“'Someone' had a restless night”, I muttered glancing across at Sherlock, who at least had the decency to blush. He was always something of an octopus when we slept but every so often he would be unable to settle properly and I would be kept awake while he used me as a portable climbing-frame until he finally got comfortable. Unfortunately my body did not require just the odd cup of coffee or five to put itself to rights, unlike some lucky bastards with blue eyes and impossible hair that I could mention!_

_“Too much information, doc!” she grinned. “No, I want to know if you gentlemen would like to accompany out to my nice new home in the country for a spot of crime-solving.”_

_“What sort of crime?” Sherlock asked picking up his second (sixth) coffee._

_“None”, she said. “Yet.”_

_We both looked at her in surprise._

_“What sort of crime do you _expect_ to happen?” Sherlock ventured. _

_“No idea”, she said._

_“Where might this crime be taking place, then?” I asked, hoping for at least something._

_“That I might know”, she said. “Come on, you have looked at things before and just _known_ that something was wrong even before you knew how you knew what you knew. That is the feeling I have over what might be happening next week.”_

_“Which is?” Sherlock asked with a yawn. “Sorry.”_

_“The St. Valentine's Day Massacre – _Part Two!”__

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It was Monday, February the tenth. Myself, Sherlock and Miss St. Leger – the only person I knew who had ever called her 'Clementine' to her face had been Mr. Guilford Holmes the one and only time that they had met each other, but he had been out of hospital in barely two weeks – had gone to Marylebone Station to catch a Great Central Railway train on the recently-opened main line to the Midlands and North. Our destination was somewhere called Redford which, she had told us, was in the county of Northamptonshire.

“I had that place in Cuffley, not far from London in Hertfordshire, until the start of last year”, she explained, “but my neighbours there were _horrible!_ And since they had been there since the dinosaurs I had to be the one to up sticks and move. Luckily I had done a favour for an estate agent only a month back and he recommended this place that a friend had told him about. A cute little bungalow, one of only four houses in the village – and that includes the church!”

“Not a big place”, I said.

“That is part of the back-story”, she said. “We change at Brackley for the train down the Reed Valley to Redhampton, the terminus. It is also the largest place in the valley now although still not much more than a village. There are three other places of any size; Redwood, Redbridge Magna and Redbridge Parva. I live in Redford where the two branches of the Reed River meet. It is the history of the place that is behind this so sorry if I am boring you.”

“Please continue”, Sherlock smiled. “I am sure that _you_ of all people would never waste breath on unnecessary information.”

"Very true", she said. “Until the seventeenth century Redford was the largest place in the area, bigger than Brackley at the time. It had a castle and everything. However the villagers went and chose the wrong side in the Civil War, at least from their point of view. Everywhere else in the valley they were for King Charles but Redford was for Parliament.”

“The valley is not that far from Edge Hill, the first major battle of the war. Both sides sent men to the battle, although the Parliament force from the other villages was larger. The Parliament fellows fell back on London and some of the king's men gave chase, although the king himself dallied as we all know. The Royalists came down the Reed Valley and the soldiers who had got to the castle fired at them as they passed by. The king's men did not want to waste time when he was advancing on London and a chance to wrap things up so he ignored the place. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief – but one Mr. Nehemiah Brown, who was the chief landowner in Redhampton, had a long-running feud with the Dowdeswell family who owned Redford. In the middle of winter 1643 – St. Valentine's Day, as I said – he raised a troop of soldiers then attacked and burnt the place. That was pretty much the end for Redford. The castle was.... blighted?”

“Slighted”, I corrected. “A polite fiction for rendered inhabitable and unusable.”

“Go on”, Sherlock urged.

“I moved in last March and found that I had just missed out on an annual event”, she said. “Every year a group of people from the valley villages dress up and re-enact the event. It sounded a hoot; as you can guess the idea of a female soldier raised more than a few eyebrows although once I promised to pay for several barrels of beer in Redhampton at the end of all the fun, suddenly no-one seemed to mind any more.”

“What an _amazing_ coincidence!” I chuckled. Her face grew serious.

“The thing is, the event is this Friday”, she said. “As I said they call it the St. Valentine's Day Massacre which is... charming! But lately I have been getting a bad feeling as if something is going to happen. I deal with information, not people directly, so this is not my speciality.”

“But it is ours”, Sherlock said. “It sounds most interesting.”

“The group doing the re-enactment is called the Red Circle”, she said, “from the fact that the two branches of the Reed almost curve back on each other. I do not know just what it is that is making me nervous but something definitely _feels_ wrong.”

I could not know then just how justified she was in that feeling, nor that untimely deaths in the Reed Valley were soon to not just be a thing of centuries long past.

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We duly changed at Brackley to the Reed Valley Railway (which I noted was operated by the Great Central) and a few minutes later alighted from the branch-line train at a small station called Carlington & Blackstock from where we took a carriage. The most surprising thing about Redford when we reached it after a couple of miles was that the main road up from Brackley ran through it. The branch-line ran parallel to it although of course there was no station for so small a place. It was as small as our host had described; one single cottage opposite a small and rather attractive Saxon church with what had to be a tiny vicarage behind it, a farm track leading to a distant and barely visible farm, a low flattened hill which had presumably once borne the castle of which there was nothing left, and finally Miss St. Leger's bungalow which I thought surprisingly small. She must have caught my expression.

“I did not want to be rattling around inside some huge barn of a place”, she said. “I wanted somewhere small but well apart and with good connections to my business in London. Brackley Station is under half an hour from here, fifteen minutes with my driving. Though I may have been sold a pup.”

“Your estate agent friend lied to you?” I asked. She shook her head.

“Not unless he was psychic”, she said. “A few months back the government suddenly decided that they needed a new mega-barracks somewhere in the Home Counties; the Kaiser thing I suppose. Because of the branch-line Redford is one of the places on their list, one of twelve. I may have to move again.”

“Twelve to one is good odds”, Sherlock said. 

“True”, she admitted, “and that they might have to build over part of a battlefield may also be a factor. They did some preliminary digging in the area just before they announced the decision and they found a dead body almost at once. Fortunately he had been dead for centuries, the poor sod.”

“So this place was destroyed by the Royalists”, I said as we pulled to a halt outside Miss St. Leger's house. “Then the people driven out, presumably.”

“Old Nehemiah Brown claimed that they were interfering in his getting supplies through to the king's capital at Oxford”, she said, “which was a bare-faced lie as he could just as easily have used any of several other routes some of which were shorter. The records say that he singled out those he could ransom and told the rest they could burn in their homes or leave. I have my doubts on that though as his only Dowdeswell captive 'just happened to be shot dead while trying to escape'. Funnily enough they are still here at least in the form of the parish priest the Reverend Nigel. They want to close down his church here but he is fighting for it. He is unmarried although he does have a couple of Dowdeswell nephews and one of those has a son already.”

“Are the Browns still in the area too?” Sherlock asked.

“Unfortunately, yes”, she said with a grimace. “Though maybe not for much longer. Mr. Isaac Allerby-Brown is the last of the line although he is still young enough to marry and continue it – if he could find anyone desperate enough, that is! He is as bad as that awful railway director you put in his place in Essex that time, another insufferable pompous oaf!”

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The following day Sherlock and I went to the re-enactment meeting held in Redhampton. The plan was that everyone would wear period costume as soldiers of the time – the women were supposed to dress as camp followers but thanks to the barrels of ale Miss St. Leger was wearing a full soldier costume which I found somewhat disconcerting – and start out at Brackley. They would then follow the route of the king's troop to Redford, surround the village as the soldiers had done in the seventeenth century, hold a minute's silence and then attend a remembrance service in the churchyard before continuing to Redhampton – and the beer!

 _(Sherlock says that I have to include our hostess's suggestion that I dress up as her handmaiden; evidently she_ had _noticed that time we had joined her for one of her re-enactments and a certain costume had, ahem, 'gone missing' for a while afterwards. Oops!)._

Miss St. Leger also introduced us to some of the local people she had told us about. The Reverend Nigel Dowdeswell was a small tired-looking fellow of about forty-five years of age, constantly wringing his hands and looking nervous at having to preach to a congregation several dozen times larger than usual. I would not like to call him absent-minded but I saw him spend five minutes looking for his glasses before someone managed to stop him fretting for long enough to tell him that they were hanging out of his top pocket.

We also met Mr. Isaac Allerby-Brown and I can only comment that if anything our hostess had underplayed his true awfulness. It was customary at the time for some young men, especially those who had just come of age, to wear what was called a 'majority ring', but this fellow who had to have been at least thirty had two large bracelets each adorned with a huge majority symbol (the Roman numerals XXI representing twenty-one). Miss St. Leger, bless her, rescued us after what seemed like an eternity by claiming that there was a telegram for Sherlock and she needed me to help her with her costume. Never had silence sounded so wonderful!

The other person that we met was also quite distinctive. Miss Eunice Pulham was about forty years of age and worked at a ladies' clothing shop in Towcester, a nearby town. She was passionate about local history and insisted on relating the whole destruction story to us (in between the inevitable simpers sent in a certain someone's direction, worse luck!). I usually admire passion for a subject but she was a little _too_ keen. Miss St. Leger explained later that the lady was a cousin of the Reverend Nigel, her great-grandfather being the latter's grandfather. 

I actually liked history, but I really wished that I had brought ear-plugs for this adventure!

The day was also notable for an incident that arose out of another guest to whom we were not introduced. Refreshments had been laid on for the club members and I had loaded up my plate when I noticed Mr. Allerby-Brown talking to a tall patrician gentleman by the doorway. I moved over to Miss St. Leger.

“Who is that?” I asked.

She looked across and bit her lip.

“That”, she said, “could be _big_ trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked. He had somehow managed to find a cup of coffee which was strange as I was sure that I had been told that only tea was available. Then again with his charm anything was possible. Miss St. Leger looked around and sighed in relief.

“He must have gone”, she said. 

“Who?” I asked. 

“Reverend Nigel”, she said. “Insufferable pompous oaf _redux_ is talking to – at – the Bishop of Lamport and Brixworth whose diocese this is. 'I.P.O.R.' wants an extension to the church in Redhampton – including a nice new stained glass window honouring _his_ munificence, of course – and is pressuring the Church to close St. Ethelflaed's in Redford to save money. I bet he would be prepared to offer an even larger donation if he can have his way.”

I looked across at the two men and noticed that Miss Pulham was seated not far away from them. The look on her face was frankly alarming.

“Medusa”, I muttered. 

“Family feuds persist in rural areas”, Miss St. Leger remarked. “We had two families in Cuffley who had been fighting over a small field since the days of King John, and seven centuries on they were still at it. That was one reason why I left. Time is not so much a great healer in rural areas as a chance for things to fester. I suppose that it was foolish of me to expect here to be any different.”

I was silently glad that Miss Pulham would not be in possession of a weapon for the re-enactment. I for one would not have trusted her with it.

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The day of the re-enactment dawned cold and chilly but Miss St. Leger was uncommonly cheerful. Sherlock and I rode to Brackley in her carriage while she was on her other horse in full costume. She looked every inch the Cavalier and the well-designed outfit meant that one would have had to have got very close to have realized that this particular soldier was rather more than they first appeared. 

When we reached Brackley there was the usual _milieu_ before everyone finally got to their allotted places and we headed along the road to Redford and Towcester. A sharply-dressed Cavalier who was wearing blue rather than the more common red spoke briefly with our hostess and after he had left we asked her who he was.

“That was Bernie, my estate agent friend” she said. “He has heard unofficially that they're inclining more towards a site in Buckinghamshire for the new camp. Disappointing for him; a development here would have made him oodles of cash!”

I looked along the line of soldiers to where Mr. Allerby-Brown was shouting at a man who was presumably meant to be his squire. Somehow it did not surprise me in the least that the ghastly fellow had ended up as King Charles the First. I wondered idly if they might make the re-enactment a full one and cut off his head at the end. Just for reality's sake, of course.

The Disapproving Look. I did not even have to turn round to know that it was there.

“That is his cousin Humphrey – Mr. Benfleet”, Miss St. Leger said. “You would think he could be a bit nicer to the fellow who is only a heartbeat away from the estate but Hump being a mere bank clerk means that he looks down on him. Yet the estate will be his one day unless the windbag can find a passing female with poor vision, desperation or no taste. Preferably all three!”

I chuckled.

“Talking of the fairer sexes”, she went on, “my people down in London found something interesting on Miss Pulham.”

“What?” Sherlock asked.

“She visited the British Museum yesterday and asked for the names of some people who could authenticate an ancient document for her”, she said. “I know that she has been writing up a history of the churches in the Red Valley. She may have found something in the old records.”

“I cannot believe that it could make her dislike Mr. Allerby-Brown any more”, I observed. “Though I am quite certain that she would try!”

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It was about three miles to Redford and it took some considerable time for both the journey and to assemble everyone in a loose ring around the old centre of the place when we finally got there. After a minute's silence for the dead, as many people as could crammed into the churchyard, where a temporary pulpit had been arranged, and the benches set out before it. They had even screened off the traditional family pew at the front.

“I do not believe it!” Miss St. Leger hissed. 

“What?” I whispered back. She gestured to the front.

“I.P.O.R. is seating himself in the Dowdeswell family pew”, she hissed back. “Talk about striking a match in a gunpowder factory. If Reverend Nigel is ever going to call down holy fire, now is the time!”

To her and our surprise however the little priest did not seem overly perturbed at this discourtesy. Though I could not but notice that his theme for the sermon was Revelation chapter six, verse ten – _'And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?'_ I shuddered as his words echoed around the Northamptonshire countryside. I could almost imagine the once great town going up in flames, destroyed by the neighbouring landowner under the pretence of wartime 'necessity'. At least most of the people back then had been spared.

I suppose that I should not have been surprised that once the sermon was over, Mr. Allerby-Brown immediately uncorked his wine-bottle and quaffed a mouthful before even leaving his pew. True, we were not actually _inside_ the church but it was still brazenly disrespectful. But then I had met him so that did not surprise me.

Mr. Allerby-Brown subsequently clutching his throat, moaning out loud and falling to the floor in agony. I admit that yes, _that_ surprised me!

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I rushed over to the man pushing my way through while yelling that I was a doctor. At one point I bounced off someone and looking up I saw that it was Miss Pulham, but I was more concerned with reaching my patient. She followed me through to the front and I quickly loosened the man's collar.

“He has been poisoned!” I said. “Where is the bottle that he was drinking from?”

Someone pointed to where the bottle lay on the ground, its contents having largely emptied out when it was dropped. Sherlock came up and carefully lifted it up in a handkerchief. It was clear that there was nothing I could do for Mr. Allerby-Brown who was not long for this world. I quickly examined him and noticed there was a strange smell about his neck. I turned to Mr. Benfleet.

“Did Mr. Allerby-Brown wear anything like a cologne today?” I asked. “Or perhaps drink something herbal?”

“He hates all male fragrances”, Mr. Benfleet said firmly. “And he never drinks herbal tea or anything like it.”

The man breathed his last and slumped lifelessly in my arms, and I laid him carefully on the ground. Regardless of how unpleasant he had been in life a patient of mine, however briefly, had died. I would not let that rest.

“We need to carry him to where he can be examined”, I said firmly. “A cool room would be better. Reverend, could we have him taken into the church?”

I fully expected the priest to say no to the presence of such an ungodly man in his house but to my surprise (and relief) he nodded, although he looked on the point of collapse himself. I turned to Miss St. Leger.

“”Perhaps you should continue with the procession”, I said. “We cannot leave everyone standing around in a field all day.”

“I am staying right here!” she said firmly. “I want to know what happened to him.”

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Fortunately the Redhampton constable, a burly young fellow called Jones, was part of the re-enactment so was able to take people some distance away and sort out witness statements. My examination of the late Mr. Allerby-Brown yielded little except that he had most definitely been poisoned. Sherlock had stayed with me during the examination and when I told him my suspicions he agreed, though I sensed that he knew more than he was saying. A basic but reliable test of the water-bottle showed that the contents had been dosed with aconitum (or monkshood) in an amount large enough to kill. 

Which seemed cut and dried – except when Constable Jones spoke to the witnesses, it emerged that Mr. Allerby-Brown had in front of witnesses at Redford shared the contents of the very same bottle with his friend Mr. Beagle, his own lawyer, before taking his seat. And annoyingly, the lawyer was not even ill. Why was there never was a dead lawyer around when you wanted one?

Sherlock of course had an idea. 

“I am thinking a trap”, he said. “It may involve a long wait though I hope not if it catches the person that I expect.”

“Count me in!” Miss St. Leger said excitedly. “Where?”

“In the local church”, Sherlock said. “I think that someone will visit Mr. Allerby-Brown and attempt to remove a critical piece of evidence. That was why I persuaded the constable to leave the body until tomorrow, since it has already been examined by a fully qualified doctor.”

The two of us agreed and we followed him over to the small church. It had of course been locked by the vicar but a locked door never stopped Sherlock and we were inside in seconds. The body of Mr. Allerby-Brown lay undisturbed on a bench at the back, the other benches having been returned to their normal positions. Sherlock went up to it and sighed unhappily.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I was so hoping that I was wrong”, he sighed. “Come. We have no business here.”

Now totally puzzled we followed him out and around to the vicarage which lay slightly behind the church. He knocked at the door and the three of us were admitted. Reverend Dowdeswell welcomed us into his study.

“How may I be of assistance?” he asked politely.

“By admitting your guilt”, Sherlock said calmly. 

There was a stunned silence all round.

“I am not sure that I understand”, the priest said. Sherlock sighed. 

“I think it only fair to tell you, reverend”, he said quietly, “that after the doctor's examination of the body I took the precaution of removing the man's collar and sending it to London for official testing. I am sure that the results will show high levels of aconitum on the insides. Only one person had access to the church after we left the body there. That person was you. Suspecting you, it was easy for me to lay a dust trap between the body and the connecting door to the vicarage.”

The priest slumped in his chair.

“Why?” Sherlock asked.

“I had no choice.”

“What?” I asked. 

He looked fully at me and the look in his eyes was such that I involuntarily took a step backwards. This was a man being haunted by the very hounds of Hell.

“Ever since that bastard started trying to get my church closed down, I kept getting these strange dreams”, he muttered. “I thought that it was just stress what with everything happening of late and my doctor proscribed some powders, but they kept happening, even more after the surveyors found that dead body. Dozens of people dying in a fire while everyone around just laughed. So Eunice and I started going through the church records to see if anything had happened that could explain it.”

He shuddered, his face a deathly white.

“We found something all right!” he said. “A sealed confession from one of Mr. Nehemiah Brown's men as to what had really happened that St. Valentine's Day. The fellow contracted the plague later in the war and he returned here to make his peace with the world and his final confession to the local priest, my ancestor. The official version of what happened that day was rot! They did not throw the people out of their homes and then burn them; they set a ring of fire around the place and burned them alive, and shot those who tried to escape. Mr. Nehemiah Brown saw a chance to destroy a rival landowner and a rival town, and he grasped it with both his murderous hands!”

I stared at him in shock.

“How did you do it?” Sherlock asked quietly.

“I was in charge of costumes, remember?” he said with a hollow laugh. “I knew he planned to change when he got to Brackley so I coated his collar with poison.”

“But the bottle”, I objected. “It contained traces of poison. I tested it!”

“In the confusion of a man dying in a churchyard, it was easy to swap the original for one with monkshood in it”, he said. “I did not know that he had shared it with his friend earlier. I hoped that Mr. Benfleet might be suspected.”

“That was cruel!” Sherlock said sharply. 

“When you have not slept for two months, you stop caring”, the vicar said dully. He reached across and poured himself a glass of wine. “Either way, now I shall be at peace.”

He downed his glass, stood up and smiled strangely. Only for a moment though because he promptly slumped to the floor, his glass falling away to thankfully land on the nearby chair. I made to move towards him but Sherlock shook his head.

“He wanted peace”, he said sadly. “He has it. May the souls of those done to death here all those years ago also find their rest.”

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We returned to Miss St. Leger's house for the night as the constable had asked us to remain until everything was cleared up. I felt my emotions very mixed; the vicar was a killer yet he had been effectively driven to it by the ghosts of victims past (I had checked with his local doctor and he had indeed not been sleeping lately). I wondered how I might cope if denied the blessed relief of eight hours in the arms of Morpheus.

And of course, eight hours in the arms of Sherlock.

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The next day Miss St. Leger thanked us and drove us to Brackley for the train back to London. We entered our first-class compartment and both sat back with heavy sighs.

“Which side would you have chosen, John?”

I looked up in surprise at the question.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“King or Parliament?” he asked looking at me quizzically. “If you had lived two and a half centuries ago and been forced to take sides? Nearly everyone was.”

“King”, I said firmly. “The established order. Charles was far from the best of men but that is the lottery with putting someone in charge, whether by inheritance of by democratic vote. Sometimes you get an Elizabeth Tudor, other times you get a Mary Tudor.”

“I think I would have been for Parliament”, he said. “The rights of the common man, against the tyrannical monarch.”

I looked at him pointedly.

“If you had been my partner then?” I asked. “Would you have gone against me and still supported Cromwell?”

“Of course”, he smiled. “But I suppose that you would have tried to persuade me otherwise.”

I grinned evilly, stood up in the carriage and pulled down the blinds. The Great Central Railway Company not yet being able to afford corridor coaches was about to have certain advantages, I suspected.

“I believe that I can be _very_ persuasive”, I said taking off my jacket and unbuttoning my shirt. “I think that a demonstration is in order. Right now!”

“I would be very committed to Parliament”, Sherlock grinned undressing himself farm more quickly than me as usual. He was sitting there wearing only his socks before I was finished, his cock vertical and almost daunting. “Are you going to 'ride' over here and try to convert me?”

I finally got my trousers off, and positioned myself above him. Those leather hand-grips from above the seat-rests were almost certainly never intended to be used for this but I was able to use them to support my weight while he worked me open using some unguent which, interestingly, he 'just happened' to have had on his person. Though by the time he had three fingers in me I was past concern, and pretty much past anything else as well. Using that inhuman strength of his he eased me gently down onto him and I groaned as the juddering of the train caused him to move around inside of me. 

“Let us see who is right, king or parliament”, he growled. “Whoever comes first loses.”

And with that the bastard began to attack my prostate as if he was trying to beat it into submission. I could only hold on for the ride – ride, hah! – as I was controlled by my mate and reduced to a quivering wreck until finally I came with a moan of pleasure that must have been heard by the neighbouring compartments. I reached down to encourage him to follow, then froze.

“You cheater!” I whispered. “You have been wearing a cock-ring!”

“All is fair in love and war!” he grinned back and twisted his hips, causing me to start growing hard again. I would have complained further but if this was what losing an argument felt like, I supposed that I could take it like a man.

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I did take it like a man. Twice more before we got to London. Thank the Lord that Marylebone Station was so close to Baker Street; even so the cab-ride was bloody agony!

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Postscriptum: In one of those twists of Fate the local bishop did decide to close down the church at Redford only for the government to select the village as the site for its new camp after all. St. Ethelflaed's became the new garrison church for Redford Camp and was actually expanded, so Miss St. Leger found that the peace that she had sought by moving to be short-lived which meant that she had to move again – but that is another story.

Sherlock did not forget about getting me a(nother) handmaiden's costume, so it served him right that it got damaged like that!

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	18. Interlude: Double Reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1902\. Lucifer Garrick is sure he knows what day it is. Fairly sure....

_[Narration by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire]_

I had had a brief respite from my insatiable horn-dog's attentions as his latest and seventeenth – _seventeenth, the dog!_ – child Charles had had to have his christening delayed as his godfather and Bertha's brother after whom he had been named was held up in Scotland during a fierce winter storm at the start of that year. So it was well into February before a blubbering behemoth came round and asked if I was free, and I donned the infamous Panama hat as I waved goodbye to my senses for the next few hours.

Ye Gods, Benji seemed even more overwrought than usual, walking me around the room impaled on the Banjax and even up and down the stairs in what was apparently an attempt to make me come so hard that I could never come again! I was a totally broken man when he finally laid me on the bed and gently wiped me down; even smiling at him took an effort!

“The christening went off all right?” I asked, quite proud that I had managed a whole sentence.

That seemed to set him off again, and I shuddered at the feral look on his face.

“Doctor Watson called round, Mr. Lucifer sir”, he said. “Bet's expecting again.”

As I had thought before, the insatiable horn-dog had to be doing it in the recovery room at this rate!

“And little Luke's growing just like his wonderful godfather!” Benji sniffed. “I'm so damn happy!”

Yes, despite the obvious there would be a son of mine of sorts, Bertha having agreed that their sixteenth child would bear my name or at least the short form of it. I had promised Benji that my godfather duties apart the young Luke would be treated exactly the same as his siblings financially, and he....

He was looking at me with That Look again! Lord help me!

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Showing his usual disdain for the devil, the Lord did not. And what was left of me was verily glad!

ϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙϙ


End file.
